In Kristen Perrin’s first Castle Knoll Murder Mystery, How to Solve Your Own Murder, Ann Adams attends a meeting at the estate of her widowed great-aunt, Frances Gravesdown. Unfortunately, Ann never gets to meet her distant, wealthy relative. Fulfilling something a fortune teller, Peony Lane, said years ago, Frances is murdered. Defying the odds and dodging danger, Ann discovers her aunt’s killer and claims the inheritance, including that mansion. But the past comes back to haunt Ann. In How to Seal Your Own Fate, she must comb through Frances’ diaries to solve what might be a triple-homicide.
I haven’t read the first book in the series, but Perrin does a good job of bringing the story up to date. The narrative ping-pongs between Frances in the mid-1960s, and Ann in current time. At the center of the mystery is an automobile accident that apparently killed three people, Lord Harrison Gravesdown, his son, Edmund, and Edmund’s wife, Olivia. The surviving heir, Rutherford, becomes the guardian of the couple’s young son, Saxon. Ford, just 20, also becomes Castle Knoll’s most eligible bachelor, but he marries the not-wealthy Frances, who works in her parents’ bakery.
Walking around the Gravesdown estate one day, Ann runs into Peony, who encourages her to investigate Olivia’s death. Did she die in the car accident? Or did she survive and then was killed? “Frances will have a file on her,” she tells Ann. Indeed, Frances kept detailed diaries and seemed to have a file on everyone in Castle Knoll. But before Ann gets too far into this assignment, Peony is found dead, stabbed with a ruby encrusted dagger and left in the estate’s solarium. The files Ann needs, covering a critical time in 1967, are missing. Ann suspects they have been taken by one of Frances’ longtime friends, Archie Foyle. Visiting the elderly Archie, Ann sees the diaries on a shelf, but when she asks to take them, Archie refuses, just increasing Ann’s curiosity and determination.
In Frances’ narrative, we learn the reasons for Archie’s subterfuge. They were friends, yes, but before Frances married Ford, they were so much more. And Archie was close to Edmund and Olivia, and also knew others who might have knowledge about that car crash.
Peony’s original name was Ellen. As a teenager, she and Archie’s brother, Eric, seriously damaged Edmund’s purple Rolls Royce. Archie ran off, but Ellen did time, emerging as Peony Lane with the ability to tell fortunes. Her abilities earned her a following and Frances, for one, believed the prediction that she would be murdered. The Peony that Ann encounters is elderly, but has lost none of her ability to shock. Ann turns down the offer to learn her fate. Ironically, it’s Peony who will meet an untimely death.
Flashbacks seem to be in vogue these days and often can be confusing. Perrin, however, manages the time shift perfectly, dropping critical clues in Frances’ past that impact what’s happening in the present. And the characters – plenty of them – are given back stories that fill out their histories and their motives.
Perrin also does a nice job of creating a small town environment – picturesque, friendly, but also a place where bad things sometimes happen. And the ending makes it clear that we haven’t seen the last of Ann or Castle Knoll.
How to Seal Your Own Fate
Kristen Perrin
Top photo: Bigstock
