by Rupert Holmes
Read by Neil Patrick Harris & Simon Vance
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Content: There is talk of murder, of course, plus descriptions of sexual harassment and assault. There are also mentions of suicide. It’s in the Mystery section of the bookstore.

In this fictitious how-to guide, we follow three students of McMasters Academy – a school that is hidden and dedicated to teaching people the art of “deletion”, or rather, ending the life of a specific target for a very particular reason. It’s not just murder though, there are Ethics. At any rate, we follow Cliff Iverson, whose boss is a horrible human being and is responsible for the suicides of at least two people; Gemma Lindley, a nurse who helped her gravely ill father die faster and is being blackmailed for it; and Dulcie Mown, aka film star Doria May, who has been relegated to the back lot by the despicable film studio head, who is angry with Doria because she wouldn’t sleep with him. All three are at McMasters to learn how to off these horrible people, and we follow them through their education and theses – or their final deletions.

On the one hand, Harris and Vance were excellent narrators. They are, for the most part why I kept listening. The plot of the book, however, was not that engaging. My biggest question was: why did we have to follow three people? Why did there need to be three plots? We mostly followed Cliff, so why didn’t we just stick with him? What was the point of including Doria and Gemma? It frustrated me. Also: this one was billed as funny, but I only got a few chuckles out of it. It was almost like Holmes was trying too hard. And I don’t know why this one is being billed as a mystery – there’s nothing to solve, there’s no intensity – Holmes lays everything out for us, and leaves nothing for the reader to try and solve.

I kept thinking that I’d forgive all my complaints if the ending was good, but it wasn’t. It just kind of petered out, lamely limping toward the conclusion. Not my cup of tea at all.