Sometimes you go into a store for one thing and end up walking out with an armful of other items. For me, the same thing happens when it comes to reading. I was going to OverDrive to check out a different title, and, as luck would have it, I spotted How to Solve Your Own Murder. Looking into it, I saw all the ingredients for a great weekend read: British mystery(!), murder in a small village(!), and comparison to Knives Out(!).
In the book, aspiring mystery writer Annie Adams has just sent off her first manuscript to publishers, which she concedes to her best friend had no real editing. Annie’s future as a mystery writer isn’t looking promising, but she just might make a great mystery solver after her eccentric great-aunt Frances is found dead under suspicious circumstances.
Frances is a key figure in family lore, specifically her obsession with a fortune told to her in the 1960s as a teenager that predicted her murder. While her theories are usually met with skepticism, Frances was always adamant that she had a grim fate in store. Her will challenges Annie to compete with another potential heir, Saxon, to solve her murder in order to inherit her property. Luckily, Annie’s love of murder mysteries and the impulsiveness it spurs in her soon come to work out in her favor.
I found the book very hard to put down, and I ended up finishing it in a day after stubbornly staying up late to keep turning the pages. The writing is well-paced, and Perrin deftly interweaves two separate-but-connected mysteries by alternating parts of their narratives.
Lovers of cozy British mysteries with a few twists will be happy to immerse themselves in the world of Castle Knoll and all of its characters, past and present, along with their secrets. The novel also has some meta-mystery elements that would appeal to readers who enjoyed The Woman in the Library and Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.
