South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
‘Murder Your Employer’ just getting started
Mega-talented Rupert Holmes has mastered just about every entertainment genre with the awards to prove it. He’s a singer/songwriter (“Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”); composer/ playwright (“The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” “Curtains,” “Accomplice”); writer of all 56 episodes of the TV series “Remember WENN”; and has written two critically acclaimed mystery novels. Holmes was the first person in theatrical history to win Tony awards as an author, a composer and a lyricist.
Holmes dips back into the mystery genre with the droll, tongue-in-cheek “Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide,” his third novel. In “Murder Your Employer,” Holmes illustrates his love of mysteries with solid plotting and a bit of irreverence.
As the title suggests, the story is about how to kill your boss, which, according to the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, ranks high on people’s homicidal intents. Set during the 1950s, “Murder Your Employer” is a kind of Cliff ’s Notes textbook for would-be killers — a “finishing school for finishing people off.” The McMasters’s location is so secret not even students know what country they are in. While scholarships are available, students don’t know who is sponsoring their steep tuition.
Most mysteries put the reader firmly on the side of the victim and justice. Not this time. Holmes turns the genre upside down by making us root for the killers.
These employers have to be truly vile, usually a danger to others, for McMasters to groom and sanction its students for their demise. “Murder Your Employer,” narrated by Dean Harbinger Harrow, focuses on three students — Baltimore engineer Cliff Iverson, British hospital worker Gemma Lindley and Hollywood star Dulcie Mown. Each of these students have valid reasons, such as Cliff, whose sadistic boss’s sloppy work endangers people.
Holmes creates a full world, with specific terms — “deletion” is preferred instead of murder. And rigid rules — students may only go after their target and never endanger anyone else. Most of all, don’t get caught and never acknowledge that McMasters even exists. Those who fail don’t just receive an F: They pay with their lives. So, don’t skip a class, develop good study habits, pay attention in those courses on weapons, poisons and disguise.
The brisk plot smoothly stays on point while Holmes adds bits of farce, quirky characters and a style and sense of place that evoke the 1950s. “Murder Your Employer” is enhanced with illustrations by Anna Louizos, who designed the sets for the Broadway production of the musical “Curtains.”
Holmes hints at a sequel but instead of nasty employers, McMasters students will go after “those who were cruel to you in adolescence.” No shortage of targets there.
Alone together
Screenwriter Iris Yamashita draws inspiration from the landscape of the real city of Whittier, Alaska, where the entire population really does live under one roof, for her perceptive debut about ennui, grief, obsession, survival and fresh starts.
“City Under One Roof” centers on Yamashita’s fictional town of Point Mettier, Alaska, where all 205 full-time residents live in one high-rise. The Davidson Condos — “Dave-Co” — also houses the tiny police station, more like a closet; a convenience store; a restaurant with almost inedible food and a bar, but few other amenities. A long, dark one-way tunnel that changes directions every half hour is the only way in or out.
During the summer, tourists come for the harbor, boating and outdoor adventures. But during the eight months of winter, only the fulltime residents can handle the togetherness and the weather, as the temperature reaches −35 °F and where “eyelashes could actually freeze.”
The plot kicks off when 17-year-old Amy Lin and her friends find a severed hand and foot in Hidden Cove, where the teens go to smoke pot and feel that there is a world beyond the building where they live — anxious to leave this “forever stasis.” Other body parts have been found along the coast, though local police believe these were from cruise ship passengers who fell or committed suicide.
Still, the case brings Anchorage Detective Cara Kennedy, planning to wrap up her investigation within hours. But a blizzard and avalanche block the tunnel. More body parts are found and a family disappears.
Yamashita makes the most of this claustrophobic environment, making “City Under One Roof” the perfect locked-room mystery. The breathtaking Alaskan scenery shines as Yamashita explores the area and its history, all of which leads back to Point Mettier.
Residents claim the scenery, the isolation or a preference for living in a close community have brought them to Point Mettier.
None of that is true. Yamashita shows a town built on secrets whose residents share “the only real reason” for moving there — “running from someone or something.” It also breeds ennui, especially among the children and teenagers, and strains everyone’s mental health.
Cara also has a covert reason for taking the investigation. She wants answers about the disappearance of her husband and young son a year ago; their remains only recently found in the area.
Even Dave-Co has secrets with hidden rooms, underground passages and concealed closets.
Yamashita delves deep to show her characters are more than just quirky. On the surface, “City Under One Roof” seems to be only a “community of stragglers, oddballs, and recluses,” but it is much more. The residents “might not always get along. . . but rallied together to protect their own. There was something hopeful about that.”
“City Under One Roof” is a rousing debut.