How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, 1)
A dual-timeline murder mystery stocked with colorful characters, this is a fun page-turner with a lot of atmosphere. In the present-day timeline, Annie Adams, a struggling writer, receives a letter summoning her to her great-aunt’s mansion in Dorset. When she gets there, she finds that her great-aunt Frances has been murdered. Annie gets involved in trying to find the killer, her primary resource being Frances’s journal.
Since 1965, when a fortune-teller at a fair predicted she would be murdered one day, Frances has been obsessed with documenting everything about her life and those around her, in an attempt to prevent her foretold fate. Her journal, which exposes love affairs, rocky friendships, and long-held secrets, is the second narrative in the novel, one we follow with as much interest as Annie as she races to solve the crime.
With plenty of plot twists, red herrings, and attempted poisonings, along with the overarching riddle of Frances’s fortune told in 1965, this has all the typical elements of a classic murder mystery. Yet it doesn’t feel flat or clichéd—our heroines are realistic, flawed, interesting characters. The solution to the mysteries (there’s really more than one) is solvable but not predictable. This debut novel is a worthy addition to mystery lovers’ shelves.
