How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

4 stars

Kristin Perrin’s How To Solve Your Own Murder is a delightful murder mystery with a dash of the supernatural. After receiving a foreboding fortune in 1965 predicting her murder, Frances Adams becomes obsessed with unearthing secrets in order to unmask her future killer. The small English town she lives in, Castle Knoll (because all good murder mysteries take place in a small English town), believes Frances Adams is off her rocker - and then some. 

Until one day, Frances is actually murdered. The fortune teller from when she was sixteen, in true fortune teller form, cryptically told Frances in her youth that “the right daughter” was the path to justice. Enter: our true main character and great-niece of Frances, Annie Adams.

In a final, brilliant twist of her own, Frances's will mandates that Annie must beat her cousin (or something like that, the family tree gets a little complicated), Saxon, and the local detective to solving the murder if she wishes to inherit and keep her home.

Annie is thrust into the turbulent life and memories of the great-aunt she never met. Caught up in a deadly game of mysteries and murder, she races to the finish line to find justice for Dear Old Frances (and sure, the mansion doesn’t hurt).

Perrin intersperses the real time unravelling of Frances's murder by her great niece with diary entries from Frances's youth, seamlessly interweaving two timelines together to create a murder sixty years in the making. 

With a refreshingly insatiable heroine – Annie Adams, who often faints at the sight of blood or any medical medical equipment, and surprisingly discerning, only mildly paranoid Frances, Perrin adds her own new style to the classic small town, big inheritance murder mystery.

Perrin navigates Frances's deep-seated belief in her fortune with surprising nuance. Instead of painting her as a paranoid old bat, Frances is a deeply forgiving, self-aware (if a little nosy) woman who does her best to manage the rocky situations she finds herself in. Perrin’s care in handling a character who could so easily be reduced to a caricature is evident and a true treasure to read.

That being said, the ugly elephant in the room has to be mentioned. While the mystery is engaging from start to finish, the book features a romance between 17 year-old Frances and a 22 year old lord. While Lord Gravesdown does actually wait to court Frances until she is 18, he does sleep with a different 17 year-old friend.

Frances's mom remarked that “a true gentleman waits until a lady is eighteen before courting her”, but a true gentleman doesn't groom a child and then only act on it once it they are technically legal. In addition to the questionable age differential, as a wealthy, well educated, titled man there is a serious power differential between the two. In the UK, the age of consent may be lower, but the age of consent is like minimum wage: if they could go lower they would.

The book doesn’t necessarily frame it in a way where the audience is expected to be critical of Lord Gravesdown. Instead, he is romanticized by, unsurprisingly, his romantic interest Frances. Romanticizing adult men pursuing teenagers, regardless of the “times”, is too common in media, and for that this book had to lose half a star.

Luckily, the romance is scant and serves as a backdrop for the larger mystery taking place. The characters are interesting and distinct. The mystery will have you flying through the pages to puzzle it out. The fortune is the perfect combination of ominous and vague, giving a fun mystic quality to the story.

This mystery is definitely worth a read. It’s written in the more classical mystery style that focuses on the mystery to be solved, rather than indulging in gore, horror, and suspense. Despite my minor bone to pick over Frances’s relationship, I will be reading the next one (when it comes out in paperback of course, like the true cheapskate I am).

Recommended for: Fans of Agatha Christie or The Thursday Murder Club, lovers of unconventional heroes, those who know to be wary of small English towns, conspiracy theorists, astrology girls, those who enjoy stories that blur the line between reality and supernatural, people with grandma hobbies

Not recommended for: Frequent users of the phrase “it’s technically legal” (you don’t need anymore encouragement), those deeply opposed to “weak” female main characters, fans of thrillers, haters of complex women and bad bitches (shout-out Great Aunt Frances, you were a real one), people who are sick of reading about small English towns