How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

 

Synopsis From The Dust Jacket:

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder.

A small part of the reason I was interested in starting up this blog again was to get myself out of my current reading pattern. My first reading love was mysteries, and that started at a young age. I devoured every Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown book I could as a kid. By the time I was in the 5th grade, I was reading Agatha Christie books and anything else I could get my adolescent hands on. As I've gotten older, I've found myself slipping into other reading obsessions over the years, but I've always gone back to devouring every twisted murder mystery I could get my hands on. For the past few years, the only mysteries I've read are those marketed in the romance genre. Now, don't get me wrong—there are some fabulous authors in the field writing mysteries within the romance genre, and I've loved several books and series—but I feel myself getting stuck in a rut, and I want out of it.

I didn't have any particular reasoning in selecting How to Solve Your Own Murder as my first foray back into the "traditional" mystery experience. In reality, I simply picked a random one off my shelves. No matter how this book landed in my hands, I'm so ridiculously glad I started here. From almost the first page, I felt the same thrill I experienced with the first Agatha Christie novel I picked up, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. It's this buzz that settles beneath my skin, burrowing its way into every brain synapse, demanding I get lost within the puzzle unfolding on the page. I last felt this with Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, and I'm so relieved to feel this way again.

Frances and Annie are two characters I simply enjoyed spending time with. Their voices are uniquely their own, but I could tell that these were two women who would have immensely enjoyed each other's company. In Frances, I found someone I need to know more about—I want to know how her brain works. In Annie, I found someone I want to spend more time with. I found her to be engaging in a way that kept me from wanting to put this book down. I can't wait to see more of both of them.

The mystery itself is as twisty as they come, and I loved every damn word of it. It was challenging enough that it kept me from figuring it out until the conclusion played out on the page, but as I look back at it, it's a fair mystery—I do think there are enough clues sprinkled about for some readers to figure it out on their own. Would it be hard? Absolutely. But I don't enjoy books that make it too easy. Unless it's a revisit with my favorite childhood detectives.