His first novel, Where the Truth Lies , was nominated for a Nero Wolfe award for Best American Mystery Novel, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut Novel, and became a motion picture starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon. Welcome to the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts – a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to “delete” their most deserving victim.

After all, when the behaviour of another person leaves you no choice but to kill them, their murder is simply involuntary suicide. In addition to murder, someone is punished by making it seem as though he liked to have sex with men who dress as women. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The writing was witty without being exhausting, the dialogue flowed and the twists and turns conveyed just right. These are real titles: 'The Talmud for Dummies,' 'Tiny Houses for Dummies,' 'Tattoos for Dummies,' as if you would do your own tattoo.Rupert Holmes does well to create an eerie and thought-provoking book, whose realism is left to the reader’s imagination. For a mystery that's about commiting a murder rather than solving it, the suspense was real and palpable. Dust jacket hand covered in protective archival grade Mylar for years of worry free collecting/reading!

However, I do feel that the pace does slow down considerably in parts owing to excessive detail (mostly in the first half of the novel) which also renders the narrative a tad too lengthy. Holmes describes how three students find their way to McMasters, what they experience, the classes they take, dorm life, and ultimately, their thesis. Posts include homicides, missing and unidentified people, wrongful convictions, and forensics as related to these cases. We follow all three candidates through their orientation, training and ultimately their “thesis” which translates into how to apply all they have learned in executing their plan, failing which has its own set of consequences. I'm too young to have understood some of references to pop culture at the time, but they didn't feel condescending as it's often the case.For those of you who do not know Colombo, he was a police detective on a long running tv series, his cases where always very very complicated and he meticulously puzzled out each piece. Cliff’s journey is not the only one either; we also follow Dulcie Mown who’s really Doria Maye (famous actress who wants to delete the director who has started to destroy her career) and Gemma Lindley (she’s being blackmailed by her terrible boss who takes credit for all Gemma’s work). Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. With a final thesis before him, Cliff will have to develop the perfect plan to kill someone and ensure that he is not caught. It just follows Gemma and Dulcie and Cliff on their separate murder planning from their own perspectives, no diaries involved.

Maybe I missed something or maybe it just went over my head, but as I was paying very close attention given that this was a mystery, I highly doubt it. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college—its location unknown to even those who study there—is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate…and where one’s mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live. And because each student has got their own specific motives and challenges, the methods differ for each “deletion”. The book-within-a-book’s author, McMasters dean Harbinger Harrow, chronicles the experiences of three students to educate at-home pupils by example.

I wanted to see them woven together, or for something to bring the various characters and plots together (ideally in a way that would give them a bit more actual character work), but it was just three chopped up accounts of three unconvincingly elaborate plans to kill people, and by the end I will admit to skimming. Holmes has been on a book tour — taking him from Harvard to Hoboken from Phoenix to the Bay Area, some in person, some via Zoom — reading from his book but also listening to audiences. The story starts with poor Cliff Iverson who tries to kill his admittedly terrible corporately evil boss, not quite succeeding, and getting drafted into the McMasters Conservatory (scholarship sponsored by an unknown benefactor) to make sure that he does not fail the second time.