Growing up, A Series of Unfortunate Events was probably my second-favorite series. Every time a new entry came out, I’d try to get my hands on a copy at our Costco run, racing through the pages to see if I could finish even before we made it through the store. It was great to find a book willing exploring the darker side of human experience, with a wonderfully snarky narrator. To this day, I’d happily read a new book in the series.
So I’m not sure why it’s taken me this long to read Murder Your Employer, which feels like a spiritual successor. I finally picked it up and immediately fell in love with the creative premise and Rupert Holmes’ distinct narrative voice. The fact that it’s an epistolary didn’t hurt either… But, as usual, reading another epistolary got me thinking about the structure of the format. And Murder Your Employer is particularly good for dissection how epistolaries create tension, and how important voice can be.
A reverse-mystery?
Murder Your Employer starts with an interesting premise: it’s a guidebook on how to commit a murder (or a “deletion”). The author / editor, the headmaster of McMasters, shares the knowledge via three examples – three different students. Each of the students plans to delete someone after their education. The headmaster also shares that at least one of the three will fill to complete their plan.
All of this means that at least one murder is inevitable, in a way that totally changes the reading experience. Instead of trying to answer “who killed [this specific] victim”, an engaged reader tries to answer:
- What is each protagonist’s plan?
- What is most likely to trip him/her up?
- Which protagonist(s) will succeed (or fail) at their deletion, and why?
One could argue that there’s nothing new here, that it’s simply a book about assassination dressed up as a textbook. But books about assassins typically read as adventures – they don’t really leave open questions about the target, or the final outcome of the attempt. Murder Your Employer, in contrast, unravels each of these puzzles over the course of the read: a whodunit in reverse. The entire package is an intellectual exercise, valorizing careful, methodical planning. And the format – an epistolary combining journal entries and school documents with commentary – only adds to that mystery.
Obfuscation through epistolary
Perhaps here it’s important to lay out how the epistolary structure of the novel works. The main protagonist, Cliff Iverson, has a deep-rooted desire to “delete” his boss. After a failed attempt, the McMasters staff whisk him away to campus. Once there, they inform that a mysterious sponsor has covered his education there completely. (Oh, and that they’ll delete him if he spills their secrets – or fails to complete his mission.) As a condition of his scholarship, Cliff must keep a journal detailing his time and efforts, on campus and beyond.
Cliff’s journal entries comprise a large part of the story, and the format adds a layer of complexity. Because Cliff writes to an unknown benefactor, there’s a sense that his writing is performative. He seems to hold back his full thoughts – on the target, on the campus, on the entire experience. He’s dry, witty, and earnest at times, but I could never get the sense of him as a full person. As in so many epistolary novels, you get the sense of an unreliable narrator.
To some extent, that’s mitigated by the additional content. The headmaster, in his capacity as editor, supplements Cliff’s journal entries with his instructors’ reports, as well as narrative commentary. This helps present a more balanced view, comparing Cliff to other students and letting us know his areas of strength or weakness. Unfortunately, his instructors seem to consider Cliff a born deletist, so most of their reports are glowing. It’s hard to get a sense of what he’s like as a person, when he’s not quite so hung up on offing his boss.
Voice and the epistolary
Another contributing factor to this challenge – and it’s a common issue with epistolary novels – is the sameness of the voice. Rupert Holmes uses a very distinctive voice throughout all the writing, a kind of fifties film noir-esque gallows humor. The writing takes pleasure in treating murder as matter-of-fact mechanics, a technical art – it’s all very Addams Family. And it makes sense that characters would think that way – after all, they’re at a school that explicitly teaches how to get away with murder.
But. Generally, even with common attitudes and principles, different characters have distinctive voices based on their backgrounds. You’d expect the headmaster and the ex-policeman and the seduction professor to act and speak differently. And while Holmes has his characters act in different ways, they all speak in the same voice. It’s a challenge common to the epistolary format: It’s quite difficult to write multiple sets of documents that reflect not just differences in intent, but also in intonation. But getting it even slightly wrong can make the entire cast seem just a bit flat or robotic.
I’m not sure exactly how much I mind it in this particular case. On the one hand – the distinctiveness of the writing lends a ton of character to the book. Reading Murder Your Employer gave serious Lemony Snicket vibes, (which is a huge compliment). On the other – it makes the characters feel a little bit like puppets, rather than people (also an issue with A Series of Unfortunate Events). On a third limb, I still enjoyed the read, and could see it becoming a nice October re-read? Holmes packs Murder Your Employer with enough humor and creativity that I stayed throughly engaged, just to see how all the puzzle pieces fit together.
I want to be extremely clear – I really enjoyed Murder Your Employer. But I can’t help but wish that Holmes had gone that extra step in his character creation, developing a more unique set of character voices to really up the epistolary tension. Overall, though, if the thought of “What if Lemony Snicket wrote about murder school” piques your interest, I’d definitely recommend giving this a read. (Though perhaps not enacting any of the plans laid out therein.) More crime-filled reads coming soon… I’ve somehow ended up with quite the backlog.
Until then, stay cozy, and stay curious!
