How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

Title: How to Solve Your Own Murder
Author: Kristen Perrin
Publication: Dutton, hardcover, 2024
Genre: Mystery
Setting: Britain

Description: In 1965, Frances Adams was at a fair with teenage friends when a fortune teller warns her she will be murdered. Over the years, this changes a lovely, outgoing young woman into a neurotic person who alienates everyone she knows, including her own relatives. Nearly sixty years later, her niece Annie Adams is living in a London house owned by Frances, and having recently lost her job she is trying to write a mystery. Unexpectedly, she is summoned to Dorset to meet her aunt for the first time to become her heir. When Annie reaches Gravesdown Hall, Frances has been murdered. Annie is determined to find her killer but, as always in such situations, this could result in the murderer finding her first . . .

My Impression: I liked the concept of this book – an impressionable young woman hears her ominous fortune, becomes obsessed with it, and it comes true 60 years later – but I found the delivery disappointing, in part because so much of the plot was illogical. The story is told with alternating flashbacks to 1965 and what actually happened to Frances and her friends after the unnerving prophecy. Several of these friends are still alive, living in the Dorset town, with grandchildren in their 20s, Annie’s age.

Annie was not a particularly likable heroine and seems more brash than British. She has lived rent-free in her aunt’s Chelsea home her entire life but never met or interacted with her. However, she does want to solve her aunt’s murder out of belated respect and out of self-interest. Frances’ will leaves her fortune to either Saxon, her deceased husband’s nephew, or Annie, whoever can solve the murder in a week. If neither does, the property will be sold and the money will go to the Crown. So both move into Gravesdown Hall, which should really be a crime scene investigated by the police or, at the very least, guarded so that nothing can be removed or destroyed. Also, given that Saxon has a motive for Frances’ murder, it seems crazy that Annie would stay in a house with him and his unpleasant wife or that the police would permit it.

In her place, I would either hire a bodyguard (although this is fiction, so I suppose he would turn out to secretly have a connection to Frances, like everyone else in the book) or a lawyer to challenge the absurd will, and would book a room at the local hotel (except that it is run by Frances’ dotty best friend) so I did not have to stay in house where an unsolved murder had just taken place. However, we do need a plot, don’t we, and eccentric wills are a staple. Still, I found the behavior of the characters unconvincing, beginning with the local lord of the manor seducing or allowing himself to be seduced by a teenager from a good family, the smugness of that pregnant teen (in an era when there was a stigma), and the interrelationships of Frances and her friends. I also found it hard to keep some of the characters straight. While the flashbacks and Annie’s investigation eventually explained most of the various mysteries, I only went on reading to find out the killer, not because I was enjoying it.

Source: Library. This is my tenth book for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Mystery Challenge.