How to Solve Your Own Murder

Book Review: HOW TO CHEAT YOUR OWN DEATH by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin is the third book in the Castle Knoll Files series of murder mysteries. It’s a 336 page novel to be published by Dutton on April 28, 2026.

Genre

Mystery

Description

From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, two interlocking mysteries decades apart unfold in this latest instalment in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Castle Knoll Murder Mystery series

Some secrets are deadlier than others

1968: Frances Adams is loving her new London life, and she’s stepped into a world of glamour thanks to her new friend, Vera Huntington–a magnetic socialite as mysterious as she is provocative. Vera dances around London like she owns it, taking Frances with her.

Present day: When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her famous artist mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Laura’s new protégée, left in an alley with her heart surgically removed from her chest.

Annie is no stranger to murder–after all, she’s solved a few already. And something about this case feels familiar. She’s read about one just like it in the journals of her late great aunt Frances, whose friend Vera was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way.

As Annie investigates, threats pile up on Laura’s doorstep, and it soon becomes clear that she’s next. With her mother’s life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it’s too late?

Opening Line

The neon lights of Soho bounced off the autumn puddles, their reflections half interrupted by the steady droplets of freezing rain.

My Thoughts

I think this was my favorite entry in the Castle Knoll Files so far!

Or, possibly, I now just have a greater appreciation for skilled writing and plots not riddled with holes when it comes to my reading of mysteries.

Either way, How to Cheat Your Own Death, book three in the series, is an engaging murder mystery that once again alternates between Annie Adams investigating with Rowan Crane in current times and the journal entries of her Great Aunt Frances that are tied to the case in some way. This one takes place in London, where Annie’s famous artist mother has welcomed her absent father back into their lives and has also taken on an apprentice in an uncharacteristic move. Laura Adams begins receiving threats in the form of animal hearts left on her doorstep, and then someone turns up murdered and dumped in her trash receptacle. As Annie and Crane work to figure out what happened, they also puzzle through what it might have to do with Frances’s history with a wealthy family in the 1960s, a murdered socialite, and a local art gallery.

I was intrigued with the threads of story around the paintings and Frances’s time as a university psychology student. There are some fascinating characters here, as well as some truly awful ones. There is also some movement on the romance front in this installment.

This book kept me up late to continue plowing through its pages to learn the truth. I will happily read any more that follow in the series!

My gratitude to Dutton and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Opening Lines Q1 2024

| Jessica Crawford
Art by Bookish Birds, on sale display at Golden Bee Bookshop in Liverpool, NY

It has occurred to me that it might be interesting to do a little deep dive on the opening lines of books I read. At the end of the month maybe I’ll publish a post about this for books I read in April, but for now, let’s see about all of the others I have read so far this year. Here we go!

January’s books:

The lightning seeded the fog with a fire that churned like a restless embryo.

The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft

I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen.

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Since I barely venture outside these days, I spend a lot of time in one of the armchairs, rereading the books.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Each year when Shesheshen hibernated, she dreamed of her childhood nest.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

Alferes Antonio Sonoro was born with gold in his eyes.

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

I love being asked to join, so much so that I will say yes to an invitation without knowing exactly what I’ve agreed to.

Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford

The body floats downstream.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Alright, let’s share our notes about these opening lines from the books I read in January!

I greatly enjoyed The Books of Babel, but that first line from the final book is just, like…wut? It must be especially confusing to someone not familiar with the series, as they wouldn’t already be aware of the lightning and the fog to which this line is referring.

As for Starling House, dreaming about a house you’ve never seen catches the reader’s interest right away. What’s the story there? I Who Have Never Known Men‘s opener is less of a hook, but it does make you wonder why there is only a limited number of books if the narrator is rereading “the” books.

When it comes to Someone You Can Build a Nest In, everything about this monster romance is wonderfully unique, and starting off by introducing a main character who hibernates and grew up in a nest is about as intriguing as it comes! This one takes first prize from me for the January books.

The Bullet Swallower‘s first line is okay, but really requires another line or two to explain what exactly it means. The beginning of comedian Maria Bamford’s memoir is both funny and informative about what you can expect the book to be about.

The opening line of The Frozen River, which I admittedly DNFed (although it has gotten a lot of love from many readers), comes across as kind of uninspired to me, but at least the fact that there is a body involved, one floating in a river no less, might hook you.

February’s books:

“Your future contains dry bones.”

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

On the eve of Mad Purdy’s first class at Elmswood Public Library, all the leaves on the trees turned red over night.

The Parliament by Aime Pokwatka

On Sunday, September 11, 2011, three men were murdered in a second-floor apartment on a dead-end street in Waltham, Massachussetts.

The Waltham Murders by Susan Clare Zalkind

Being a serial killer who kills serial killers is a great hobby…

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

Perhaps you know this story: Late one evening, a beautiful woman comes knocking on an unsuspecting scholar’s door.

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo

So personally I find the opener for How to Solve Your Own Murder to be kind of “meh”, but if you read on you learn that this line was part of a fortune told to a young woman who believed wholeheartedly in her foretold doom. The opening line of The Parliament is just “meh” with no further qualifiers. It gives us a setting, sure, but that’s it.

The Waltham Murders is nonfiction, and the first line is about as attention-grabbing as they come. Butcher & Blackbird starts by letting you know the premise of the book in an amusing way, setting readers up for what to expect. But I think The Fox Wife has the best opening line of any of the novels I read in the month of February.

March’s books:

In an old wardrobe a djinn sits weeping.

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

A poet once wrote that the woods of Gallacia are as deep and dark as God’s sorrow, and while I am usually skeptical of poets, I feel this one may have been onto something.

What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

Not a day goes by that post does not bring me at least one letter from a young person (or sometimes one not so young) who wishes to follow in my footsteps and become a dragon naturalist.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

“Hey, Barbara, you got a hanging man in the Three-Four precinct.”

What the Dead Know by Barbara Butcher

Barry Sutton pulls over into the fire lane at the main entrance of the Poe building, an Art Deco tower glowing white in the illumination of its exterior scones.

Recursion by Blake Crouch

In that time, I was called Brother Kellin of Cambrin, and I was an awful monk.

2024 High Caliber Awards (from the first entry, Mightier than the Pen by Kevin Harris)

The opening line of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is great: ooh, a djinn! Why is it weeping in a wardrobe?! The one for What Feasts at Night is also wonderful, really setting the tone; it’s also very “voicey” — this one is my favorite of the whole batch for month of March.

The first line of A Natural History of Dragons is pretty “meh”.

What the Dead Know is nonfiction about working as a death investigator in NYC, so I guess it gets straight to the point by opening with a dead body.

The opener for Recursion does absolutely nothing to grab the reader. But then we’re back in pretty great territory with Mightier than the Pen – amusing, plus now I want to hear more about what makes Kellin an awful monk.

What are your thoughts on these opening lines??

Battle of the Book Covers March 2024 Edition!

| Jessica Crawford

Here are the books that I read in March that have differing book covers. Which ones do you prefer?

A decaying horse or human skeleton covered in insect and plant life? I can’t choose, both are perfectly horrifying! I suppose I like the font the the UK cover of What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher a bit better, if I had to find something off of which to pick a favorite.

I think both of these covers for Blake Crouch’s Recursion are fine, but I’ll go with the US edition this time, because the UK cover makes me think of a spaceship or some other form of alien technology, which is not what it’s meant to do.

Although the cover image including the manor house might be more fitting, I hands down prefer the US cover of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan – beautiful color scheme, enticing swirling smoke imagery, mysterious lady in gorgeous apparel, shadowy hands, oh my!

I think the US version of the cover of How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin has a super cute and engaging art style, much more so than the UK version.

I think the cover design of the US version of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is unique and interesting, plus I’m just not a fan of the colors used in the UK edition.

So other than the T. Kingfisher Sworn Soldier novella, which was a close call anyway, I guess this month is a big dub for the US of A. What are your thoughts?

Book Review: HOW TO SOLVE YOUR OWN MURDER by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

I greatly enjoyed this whodunit with a twist, that being that the murder victim left behind clues in all her research into figuring out who was going to kill her!

Annie Adams finds herself written into her Great Aunt Frances’ will without ever having met the woman, but then almost immediately Frances winds up murdered, just as a fortune teller told her she would be when she was seventeen years old. Her recently revised will stipulates that Annie and one other relative must compete to figure out who murdered her; whoever wins, gets the entire inheritance. If neither solves the crime by the end of a week’s time, then the estate goes to property developers who will likely turn it into a county club and golf course.

While investigating, Annie also reads through her great aunt’s journal from the time when her (mis)fortune was originally told. In its pages, she meets the teenage versions of many of the same villagers she is just meeting in person, a whole cast of characters in an idyllic English village.

I did have to suspend my disbelief a bit when some parts of the mystery were too far-fetched, but I was having enough fun that I didn’t mind doing that. I was kept flipping pages to find out what had happened! It keeps you guessing right up until the end. I do wish we delved a little deeper into some of these characters, but I can see how that would be a challenge with first person narration.

Overall this was a fun read. Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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