How to Solve Your Own Murder: 07/10/24

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin, Alexandra Dowling and Jaye Jacobs (Narrators) (2024) is the start of the Castle Knoll Files mystery series. In 1965 Frances Adams was given a mysterious fortune that foretold of her murder. After a lifetime of obsessing over it, her niece has to solve her murder.

I chose the book for the title and the premise. The dead relative with a message from the beyond claiming they've been murdered is an old standard in mysteries. A cryptic fortune coming true piecemeal is also a popular trope. A cold case tied to a modern day murder is another mystery standard. These three ingredients are tropes I have enjoyed and given high ratings to in the past.

Here, though, it doesn't work. The problem is mainly with pacing. Although it's the set up for a new mystery series, this book is paced like a standalone thriller. It bears more in common with Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (2022) than with Be My Ghost by Carol J. Perry (2021) or any of the other cozies that use the same tropes.

The current day mystery is bogged down with lengthy first person journal entries by the teenaged aunt about events that happen well before the actual cold case: the disappearance of one of the girls from her old friend group. More typically the cold case scenes would parallel modern day events. Here there is too much of a disconnect between Annie Adam's attempts to solve her aunt's murder and her aunt's journal from 1965.

Finally, there's the authenticity of the narrators' voices. The book is set in England but the author is American, and I suspect the audience is intended to be American. So the words used for things are a jarring mix of British English and American English.

Other than Frances's future husband being titled, there's nothing about this book that needs to be set where it is. There are plenty of places in the United States that would have worked just as well and read as more authentic.

At this juncture, I'm not planning on continuing with the series.

Two stars

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