How to Solve Your Own Murder is a cozy mystery set in a sweet little English village sporting one very peculiar denizen.

When seventeen-year-old Frances is told by the fortune teller:

Your future contains dry bones. Your slow demise begins right when you hold the queen in the palm of one hand. Beware the bird, for it will betray you. And from that, there’s no coming back. But daughters are the key to justice, find the right one and keep her close. All signs point toward your murder.

Everyone but her thinks it is laughable. After all, the twentysomething who delivered the message was clearly just playing a part. But Frances believes it wholeheartedly, and her faith in the prophecy will guide the rest of her life.

Sixty years later, Annie Adams receives a letter advising her that she needs to meet with her wealthy eccentric great-aunt Frances and that lady’s lawyer. Annie and her mother have always assumed they were the heirs to all Frances owns, so Annie obligingly heads to the charmingly picturesque village of Castle Knoll for the appointment. When she arrives at the lawyer's office, Annie learns that in fact, there are several eligible heirs to Frances’ estate, and they will all be meeting at her sprawling country house for an update on the will. It’s a situation fraught with tension and frustration, made far worse when they arrive to find Frances dead. It is Annie who spots something strange about the arrangement of flowers that Frances was working on at the time of her demise and demands the police start an investigation. Which might or might not work in her favor. It turns out the will doesn’t actually list an heir. Instead, the terms dictate that whichever relative solves the murder (because Frances believed - due to the prophecy - that her death would be murder) within a week will inherit. If the police do, the money will be left to charity. The race is on to see just who can crack the case.

This is a dual-timeline novel, with part of the story taking place in the year or so immediately following Frances’ hearing her fortune and part of it taking place in the present day. The author does a lovely job with Frances, who comes alive in her detailed diary entries. She is vivacious, beautiful and kindhearted but also troubled and contemplative due to the prophecy. As the story unfolds, we learn Frances and her friends have deep, complex relationships, with lots of underlying tensions. Living in a small, English country village all of their lives, they are in many ways myopic, unable to see beyond their immediate reality and entanglements, and subsequently dysfunctional as a result. The author depicts realistically that sense of being trapped by your location/circumstanes, the intense desire to spread your wings and do something meaningful, and the fear of failure mixed with loyalty that keeps one attached to their community.

I really wish the story had focused almost exclusively on the past as the modern segment starring Annie is far less interesting. Annie spends most of her time racing about Castle Knoll meeting the quirky residents, all of whom are strangers to her. The text makes it clear she is the only decent heir available, as the others would either ruin the charming village through modernization, throw out estate dependents, or otherwise disrupt the lives of the locals. Aside from her being worthy of the inheritance, I had no real sense of Annie herself. Other than her love of mysteries, there is nothing that really stands out about her personality.

I struggled with the plot of this story from the beginning. The text tells us that Frances’ fortune came from her husband Rutherford, that the country estate, expensive house in the city, and money were all indirectly inherited by him. I say indirectly because his elder brother was the initial inheritor, and when he died, he left a son, so I couldn’t help wondering exactly why the inheritance did not pass directly to that young man, a boy named Saxon, but to Rutherford. Especially since there is, according to the text, a title involved. Saxon, btw, is one of the potential heirs.

I also struggled with the idea that Annie, who had never met Frances, understood her well enough via reading her diary to solve a murder that the police and those who actually knew Frances could not. And not just solve it but solve it within one week! Let’s not even get started on how much the author strains credulity with official procedures, from the autopsy to having people move into the crime scene to the detective finding Annie cute and sharing clues with her.

The tale itself deals with some dark subjects - emotional abuse, murder, teen pregnancy, cheating on one’s significant other, drug use - but maintains the comfort level of the genre by not delving into details on any of these issues.

Cozy mysteries often play fast and loose with reality, but the contemporary portion of How to Solve Your Own Murder strained my suspension of disbelief to the point that it almost broke it. If you love the genre and are looking for a fresh voice, this might be worth picking up. Otherwise, I would give it a miss.