‘How to Cheat Your Own Death’ by Kristen Perrin

Published by Quercus Books,
28 April 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-529440567-1 (HB)

Two separate murders half a century apart. The same modus operandi. Both victims, Vera and Felicity, were artists. Both had connections with the village of Castle Knoll. Coincidence? The police think so, but they are not in possession of all the facts. Annie Adams, heiress, would-be crime fiction author and amateur sleuth, is in possession of a few more.

 When her mother, an artist like both victims, keeps finding animal hearts on the doorstep of her Chelsea home, coincidence flies out of the window. Annie has several advantages over the police. To her the first murder is more than a 50-year-old cold case. Vera was a friend of her late great-aunt Frances whose journals she inherited along with two dilapidated houses and a fortune. The journals tell her a great deal about what happened back in the Swinging Sixties. Also, Felicity has had recently become her mother's apprentice, so Annie has a vested interest in both murder cases. What's more, she has an ally in Detective Rowan Crane, who has already helped her solve two murders although is not involved in investigating Felicity’s. 

The story unfolds in two separate but curiously similar timeframes. Annie’s tale starts out as a search for the mysterious dumper of bloody hearts on her mother's doorstep and soon begins to stray into Felicity's death and thence into Vera's. Great-aunt Frances knew nothing of Felicity, of course, so extracts from her journal focus wholly on her friendship with Vera and the circumstances and people surrounding Vera's death. 

As links between the cases proliferate, it's down to Annie and Crane to join the dots, work out who they can trust and who's lying, and ultimately solve not only both murders but also various other crimes in both time frames.

Confused yet? Yes, so was I for a while, especially when characters from one timeline kept popping up in the other. Parallels keep emerging too, not least between the characters. Annie and Frances have plenty in common: both are feisty and determined, and more likely to walk towards danger than flee from it; they each have a male partner-in-crime who wants to protect them, which means romance is on the cards both now and fifty years ago. There are other parallels too. Annie learns early on that her eccentric mother is lying to her; Frances discovers that flamboyant Vera has been branded a pathological liar by her abusive husband. 

But all becomes clear long before the dramatic denouement. Kristen Perrin certainly knows how to keep her readers on their toes, and sometimes on the edge of their seats. This is no ordinary murder mystery – but then which of us is satisfied with an ordinary one? Not me, and not true lovers of the genre.
-------
Reviewer: Lynne Patrick 

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 Surry, where she can be found poking around vintage bookstores, stomping in the mud with her two kids, and collecting too many plants. She has written three books. 

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.