Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide

Cliff Iverson is the second narrator and main protagonist of the novel. His target is his boss at Woltan Industries, Merrill Fiedler. While working at Woltan as an aircraft engineer, Cliff discovers a fatal flaw in his boss’s cost-cutting manufacturing alterations and feels it’s his duty to speak up. He has seen Fiedler continuously crush fellow employees, including a woman named Cora Deakins who died by suicide because of Fiedler. Fiedler was also responsible for the firing and disgracing of him and his colleague Jack Horvath, and Jack’s corresponding death is the final puzzle piece that convinces Cliff that murder is his only option.

Cliff is handsome, smart, has a sense of humor, and most importantly, has compassion for his fellow man to the extent that he can’t allow Fiedler to get away with destroying and endangering lives. His athletic capabilities, natural aptitude for planning, and experience in applied electronics gained from his education at MIT and Caltech help him get ahead at McMasters and aid in his deletion of Fiedler. Dean Harrow notes he has a diverse range of interests including spelunking, water polo, varsity baseball, and playing stride piano, all of which he uses during his time at McMasters. Within minutes of his arrival, he sees a fellow student, Gemma Lindley, and finds her attractive, moved by the fact that she doesn’t laugh at his inexperience as other students do.

He is unique in that he didn’t apply for admission but is instead sponsored by an anonymous benefactor and practically forced to attend, having botched his first attempt on Fiedler’s life and being given a choice of jail or McMasters. Part of his requirements for his sponsor (who turns out to be Liliana Horvath, his friend Jack Horvath’s widow) is to write about his time in a journal, which becomes the main text of the novel. His success and skill earn him a spot as McMasters faculty at the end of the story after he successfully tricks Fiedler, resulting in Fiedler’s death.

Gemma Lindley is a student at McMasters who is being threatened for helping her father with a terminal illness die. Her extortioner is her coworker Adele Underton who shares an office with her at a hospital in England.

Gemma is compassionate and finds McMasters and its teachings difficult because she can’t reshuffle her morality to fit her need for justice. Her character consistently illustrated both the themes of The Moral Complexities of Justice and The Use of Humor to Explore Darkness in the text. She is the single character in the novel who refuses to use disguises or find humor in their situations or teachings like the faculty and other students do. Murder, for Gemma, is no laughing matter and she cannot be anything other than herself. Her refusal to laugh at Cliff’s near fatal accident at the beginning of the story impresses him and is the earliest indicator for the reader that she is different from the other students and often illustrates the antithesis example of the themes.

Her inner compass refuses to allow deceit, and the idea that she could likely die during her deletion feels correct to her. This causes concern from the faculty who see her innate goodness and like her. Despite trying to absorb the McMasters ideals and morality, her deep sense of what’s right causes her to fail as she herself acknowledges in the moment she is hit by a falling cinderblock protecting her target, thinking “I’m no good at this” (350). This stalwart morality holds firm in the face of being deleted by McMasters faculty and earns her a place among them at the end to teach this lacking element in their curriculum.