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undercoverunicorn 's review for:
Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide
by Rupert Holmes
dark
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If you like sexism and transphobia and having everything overexplained ...
This book seemed like it would be right up my alley. It wasn't.
The premise was interesting, but the writing isn't nearly as funny or clever as it pretends to be. So much of it is ridiculous in a bad way. Every event is recounted in a formulaic pattern: 1) someone does a thing 2) someone launches into a villainesque monologue explaining what was just done and how "clever" it was.
But the reason for the super low rating instead of just an average one is the bigotry throughout. Every woman is described by whether she's attractive to a man, and the men--even the "good" ones--are constantly objectifying them. At one point, a woman is referred to as "an elderly female" while her counterpart is referred to as "an elderly man" and "an elderly gentleman."
There are no queer characters in the book, buttrans people are used as a plot device and scapegoat in a way that isn't social commentary about their struggles. A cis woman, one of the "good" characters, pretends to be a trans woman while committing a crime so the police will suspect a trans person instead of her. This is praised as clever by the people in charge (also "good" characters) instead of condemned as victimizing already marginalized people and harming innocents. Trans women are assumed (again, by "good" characters) to be "men with certain...interests," "not real women," and tricking men into having "nonconsensual" sex with them. That is also never challenged but instead treated as a given.
There was also brief homophobia and racism, but it's used to show how terrible one of the bad characters is.
I would usually nope out of a book I'd rate under 3 stars. And if I hadn't made a promise to myself to finish all library books I check out, this would have been one of them. I almost did it anyway, but the worst of it came within a hour of the end. The one silver lining is that I don't have to say "I'd give it zero stars if I could" because I can.
This book seemed like it would be right up my alley. It wasn't.
The premise was interesting, but the writing isn't nearly as funny or clever as it pretends to be. So much of it is ridiculous in a bad way. Every event is recounted in a formulaic pattern: 1) someone does a thing 2) someone launches into a villainesque monologue explaining what was just done and how "clever" it was.
But the reason for the super low rating instead of just an average one is the bigotry throughout. Every woman is described by whether she's attractive to a man, and the men--even the "good" ones--are constantly objectifying them. At one point, a woman is referred to as "an elderly female" while her counterpart is referred to as "an elderly man" and "an elderly gentleman."
There are no queer characters in the book, but
There was also brief homophobia and racism, but it's used to show how terrible one of the bad characters is.
I would usually nope out of a book I'd rate under 3 stars. And if I hadn't made a promise to myself to finish all library books I check out, this would have been one of them. I almost did it anyway, but the worst of it came within a hour of the end. The one silver lining is that I don't have to say "I'd give it zero stars if I could" because I can.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny, Sexism, Transphobia