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* MercyKill: Gemma did this to her father to spare him from more pain. Adele is aware of this and uses it as leverage.
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* KarmaHoudini: The purpose of [=McMasters=] is to help people commit the perfect murder so that they will never be suspected, let alone caught. [[spoiler:Cliff and Dulcie succeed in evading suspicion, although Dulcie's career is still going nowhere. Gemma fails in her attempt and is nearly killed herself, but Dean Harrow offers her a position on the McMasters faculty and she accepts.]]
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* KarmaHoudini: The purpose of [=McMasters=] is to help people commit the perfect murder so that they will never be suspected, let alone caught. [[spoiler:Cliff and Dulcie succeed in evading suspicion, although Dulcie's career is still going nowhere. Gemma fails in her attempt and is nearly killed herself, but Dean Harrow offers her a position on the McMasters [=McMasters=] faculty and she accepts.]]
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[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/81n8mz37ql_sl1500.jpg]]
''Murder Your Employer: The [=McMasters=] Guide to Homicide'' is a 2023 novel by Rupert Holmes. It follows three aspiring murderers as they attend the [=McMasters=] Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a school that instructs its students how to "delete" their intended targets without getting caught.
!!Tropes:
* AffablyEvil: Many of the faculty at [=McMasters=] come across as friendly and dedicated to their craft so it is debatable as to whether they qualify as "evil".
* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:By the end of the novel, Dulcie comes to feel that her murder of Leonid Kosta was pointless since he was about to be replaced by a new studio head and her career is in even worse shape than it was before.]]
* AssholeVictim: [=McMasters=] emphasizes that only people who are irredeemable deserve to be "deleted", which is certainly the case with at least two of the targets. Merrill Fiedler is a corrupt business executive who makes poor aircraft design decisions that put innocent lives at risk. Leonid Kosta is a sleazy Hollywood studio head who expects sexual favors from actresses in exchange for advancing their careers. Subverted with Adele Underton who is a generally unpleasant person and a blackmailer but does not go out of her way to make others miserable. [[spoiler:She is the only one of the three who lives.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: [=McMasters=] has several qualifications that a target must meet before they are deemed suitable for a "deletion", such as the fact that no innocent people will suffer as a result of their death.
* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler:Dulcie thinks that Kosta's replacement, Claude Revenson, is not much better than his predecessor and tells Dean Harrow, "I could just kill him."]]
* InsistentTerminology: [=McMasters=] does not like using the word "murder" and insists that all students and faculty use the word "deletion" instead.
* KarmaHoudini: The purpose of [=McMasters=] is to help people commit the perfect murder so that they will never be suspected, let alone caught. [[spoiler:Cliff and Dulcie succeed in evading suspicion, although Dulcie's career is still going nowhere. Gemma fails in her attempt and is nearly killed herself, but Dean Harrow offers her a position on the McMasters faculty and she accepts.]]
* PosthumousCharacter: Guy [=McMaster=], the school's founder.
* PublicExposure: Dulcie takes nude photos of herself as part of her alibi.[[note]]The book is set in the 1950s when this sort of thing was far more scandalous than it is today.[[/note]]
* UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:The ending implies that other faculty members did away with Dean Harrow because he wrote the book and risked revealing [=McMasters=] to the rest of the world.]]
* VillainProtagonist: Played with. Cliff Iverson and Gemma Lindley are likable characters who convince themselves that murder is their only option, whereas Dulcie Mown is a self-centered Hollywood actress who wants to use murder as a way of furthering her acting career.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: The three protagonists, their fellow students and the faculty at [=McMasters=] see what they do as a way of ridding the world of people who make others' lives worse.
* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: [=McMasters=]' location is top secret and Cliff's attempts to figure it out are fruitless.
''Murder Your Employer: The [=McMasters=] Guide to Homicide'' is a 2023 novel by Rupert Holmes. It follows three aspiring murderers as they attend the [=McMasters=] Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a school that instructs its students how to "delete" their intended targets without getting caught.
!!Tropes:
* AffablyEvil: Many of the faculty at [=McMasters=] come across as friendly and dedicated to their craft so it is debatable as to whether they qualify as "evil".
* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:By the end of the novel, Dulcie comes to feel that her murder of Leonid Kosta was pointless since he was about to be replaced by a new studio head and her career is in even worse shape than it was before.]]
* AssholeVictim: [=McMasters=] emphasizes that only people who are irredeemable deserve to be "deleted", which is certainly the case with at least two of the targets. Merrill Fiedler is a corrupt business executive who makes poor aircraft design decisions that put innocent lives at risk. Leonid Kosta is a sleazy Hollywood studio head who expects sexual favors from actresses in exchange for advancing their careers. Subverted with Adele Underton who is a generally unpleasant person and a blackmailer but does not go out of her way to make others miserable. [[spoiler:She is the only one of the three who lives.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: [=McMasters=] has several qualifications that a target must meet before they are deemed suitable for a "deletion", such as the fact that no innocent people will suffer as a result of their death.
* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler:Dulcie thinks that Kosta's replacement, Claude Revenson, is not much better than his predecessor and tells Dean Harrow, "I could just kill him."]]
* InsistentTerminology: [=McMasters=] does not like using the word "murder" and insists that all students and faculty use the word "deletion" instead.
* KarmaHoudini: The purpose of [=McMasters=] is to help people commit the perfect murder so that they will never be suspected, let alone caught. [[spoiler:Cliff and Dulcie succeed in evading suspicion, although Dulcie's career is still going nowhere. Gemma fails in her attempt and is nearly killed herself, but Dean Harrow offers her a position on the McMasters faculty and she accepts.]]
* PosthumousCharacter: Guy [=McMaster=], the school's founder.
* PublicExposure: Dulcie takes nude photos of herself as part of her alibi.[[note]]The book is set in the 1950s when this sort of thing was far more scandalous than it is today.[[/note]]
* UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:The ending implies that other faculty members did away with Dean Harrow because he wrote the book and risked revealing [=McMasters=] to the rest of the world.]]
* VillainProtagonist: Played with. Cliff Iverson and Gemma Lindley are likable characters who convince themselves that murder is their only option, whereas Dulcie Mown is a self-centered Hollywood actress who wants to use murder as a way of furthering her acting career.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: The three protagonists, their fellow students and the faculty at [=McMasters=] see what they do as a way of ridding the world of people who make others' lives worse.
* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: [=McMasters=]' location is top secret and Cliff's attempts to figure it out are fruitless.
