I received this book for free from Netgalley, Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen PerrinPublished by Quercus on March 26, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Crime, Fiction / General, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Amateur Sleuth, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / General, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General
Pages: 384
Format: ARC, eBook
Source: Netgalley, Publisher
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Buy on BookshopFRANCES ALWAYS SAID SHE'D BE MURDERED...
SHE WAS RIGHT.In 1965, seventeen-year-old Frances Adams was told by a fortune teller that one day she'd be murdered. Frances spent the next sixty years trying to prevent the crime that would be her eventual demise. Of course, no one took her seriously - until she was dead.
For Frances, being the village busybody was a form of insurance. She'd spent a lifetime compiling dirt on every person she met, just in case they might turn out to be her killer. In the heart of her sprawling country estate lies an eccentric library of detective work, where the right person could step in and use her findings to solve her murder.
When her great-niece Annie arrives from London and discovers that Frances' worst fear has come true, Annie is thrust into her great-aunt's last act of revenge against her sceptical friends and family. Frances' will stipulates that the person who solves her murder will inherit her millions.
Can Annie unravel the mystery and find justice for Frances, or will digging up the past lead her into the path of the killer?
Here I go again, reading and reviewing a book that is not fantastical in any way, unless you count the fortune teller who started the whole thing.
Our narrator is Annabelle Adams, great-niece to the extremely wealthy and paranoid Frances Adams. She’s called out to a sleepy country village for a meeting about her inheritance. A meeting that is cancelled by the unexpected death of Frances. This book is half Annabelle’s point of view, and half journal entries from Frances from that fateful 1965 summer when her death was foretold and the story of what happened leading up to her friend’s disappearance.
This is a fun mystery with lots of potential murderers, because who knew that a paranoid and demanding rich white woman wouldn’t end up universally beloved? Frances started attempting to solve her own murder decades before it occurred. It’s revealed that she kept detailed dossiers of everyone in town, complete with an entire murderboard room full of photos, pushpins, and string. How delightfully tin-foil-hatted. She suspected everyone around her, and so everyone is a suspect.
Despite nearly everyone in the book being completely unaware of their privilege due to their close proximity to wealth, the book drags you along with it through the end. It’s completely captivating, even though the book is filled with selfish, oblivious people. Even Annabelle curiously never seems to worry about who is paying her open-ended hotel bill, despite all the talk in the beginning about how her mom is a struggling artist whose home is owned by Frances, and Annabelle herself is attempting a career change into being a mystery author.
It isn’t so much the characters that are compelling, but the setup. Was Frances’ murder really foretold by prophecy? Did it have anything to do with the disappearance of her childhood friend? What was the role of the wealthy older man who Frances clearly ended up marrying? And what older man hangs about with teenagers, even in 1965? All that is even before you get to Frances’ mysterious murder. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy because Frances was so obsessed with it? Coincidence? Was it over the money or something else? Was it a product of old grudges or new? And what role did the husband’s strange nephew play, both in 1965 and now?
All these questions and more are addressed in the book, and while I did eventually suspect the real murderer before the end, the questions of why and especially how were still a bit of a surprise. A completely digestible mystery for a pleasant day’s distraction. If you’re a murder-mystery fan, I’d recommend it.
