‘How To Solve Your Own Murder’ by Kristen Perrin

Published by Quercus,
26 March 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-52943005-9 (HB)

Twenty-five year old Annabelle (Annie) Adams has recently lost her job.  With encouragement from friend Jenny, she is pursuing her dream to become a murder-mystery writer.  Now lacking an income Annie has moved back in with her mother Laura, a famous painter who has fallen out of fashion but is in the process of relaunching her own creative career.  Mother and daughter share a large, if somewhat chaotic, house in Chelsea.  Their home comes courtesy of Laura’s wealthy aunt Frances Adams who prefers to dwell in her country estate near the village of Castle Knoll. 

Annie has never met Great Aunt Frances and is therefore surprised to receive a letter from the old lady’s solicitors in which she, rather than her mother, is named as the elderly lady’s heir.  Bemused and excited, Annie travels to Castle Knoll for a meeting with Frances and her legal representatives.  When she arrives at the village, however, the well-planned itinerary quickly begins to unravel.  First, Annie discovers Frances has been murdered, and then she stumbles upon some notes from her elderly relative’s files that reveal dark secrets from the past.  The crime writer finds herself confronting two puzzles, one in real time, the other dating back to the 1950s.  To inherit Frances’ fortune Annie has just seven days to find the killer, and to make matters worse she must compete against another named beneficiary.  As the author gets closer to discovering whodunnit, could her own life be under threat?

A brief third person narrative opens How To Solve Your Own Murder, after which the story is told through two contrasting first person narratives.  Annie’s present day tale is interspersed by a story that began in the mid-twentieth century as Frances’ voice emerges from her meticulous notebooks.  The novel also plays with the two meanings of the noun ‘fortune.’  A prophetic fortune received by the young Frances in 1956, has haunted her throughout her life.  Alongside this is Frances’ monetary fortune, which reaches into the present day and embraces her great niece, Annie.  This clever shift between time periods and word meanings adds to the developing intrigue as the plot unfolds.

A cast of eccentric and enigmatic characters makes it difficult for Annie to work out who she can trust.  Indeed, Castle Knoll is full of apparently upstanding personalities almost all of whom are concealing dark secrets – wonderful.

How To Solve Your Own Murder is Kristen Perrin’s first novel for adult readers and it’s a gem from beginning to unexpected end.  I loved it.
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Reviewer: Dot Marshall-Gent

Kristen Perrin is originally from Seattle, Washington, where she spent several years working as a bookseller before moving to the UK to do a master's and a PhD. She lives with her family in Surrey, where she can be found poking around vintage bookstores, stomping in the mud with her two kids, and collecting too many plants. How To Solve Your Own Murder is her debut adult novel. 

Dot Marshall-Gent  worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.