How to Solve Your Own Murder
Why I love everything about this book, from the clever title onwards
Hello and welcome to Making Crime Pay! I’m Nicki Thornton - I’m an author. I share my creative journey here and what I am learning along the way. I pass on my love of books by sharing what I am reading and review them so you can enjoy them too. YOu can book me to visit schools and other places to encourage a love of reading and help writing be more fun!
Nicki
I’m excited to share one of my favourite reads of the year so far, but first . . .
You probably know another of my big loves (as well as books and reading in general) is bookshops as I ran one for more than ten years.
So big shout out that this week is Independent Bookshop Week a week long celebration of indie bookshops all across the UK.
I love an indie bookshop. They are all so individual with a chance to see a stock selection that reflects the owner’s taste more than being dictated by the big publishers. And all those small businesses are invaluable for enriching their local communities.
We all have our own favourites (books and bookshops!). You can check out some of my current favourite titles here - the books I don’t think you want to miss. This list is on Bookshop.org, an online arm of indies so you can still support indie bookshops even if you don’t have one near to you.
If you do manage to call into an indie bookshop this week you can leave with a free book token to spend in the future - and I predict you will leave with a few reads you didn’t even know you wanted!
And now onto another prediction . . .
I have been eagerly looking forward to How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin.
The title is a killer! And I love the idea - a tarot prediction that Frances will be murdered!
The story opens when Frances indeed is murdered, but that is at the end of a long life obsessed with wondering who will kill her and why . . . and a whole murder room of secrets trying to stop her murder before it happened.
Needless to say Frances has uncovered a lot of guilty secrets. But which led to her death?
This is a fabulously fun and twisty plot. The quest to answer the question of How to Solve Your Own Murder hots up when Frances’ huge inheritance becomes at stake.
What follows is a team of amateur sleuths trying to solve the crime against each other, and against a deadline. By gathering a lifetime of secrets, Frances upset a lot of people, mostly in the village of Castle Knoll, both now and in the past.
I have been saving this one up and devoured it in a couple of days, which I know is what an author wants, but I do also know how many months, even years of work can go into a book. So I hope lots of others will be as captivated as I am by this very clever and very entertaining story.
It is the sort of puzzle I adore. A huge cast of possible suspects, amateur sleuths, layers of buried secrets, a dual timeline written in a secret diary and even an ingenious murder method. Plus it’s set in Dorset inspired by Corfe Castle. The perfect summer read.
Such fun!
I love my Substack community. If you want to get these notes regularly, just hit subscribe. Thank you for being part of it. Thanks to everyone who is reading this and everyone who kindly supports me and my writing.
Nicki