How to Solve Your Own Murder

In 1965, at an English country fair, a fortune-teller tells Frances Adams that she will one day be murdered. Frances takes the warning seriously. She spends the rest of her life trying to solve a crime that has not yet been committed.

Nearly sixty years later, her great-niece Annie Adams is called to a meeting at Frances's large country estate. Frances is wealthy and reclusive, and Annie has not been close to her. By the time Annie reaches the village of Castle Knoll, Frances is dead, killed just as she always said she would be.

Annie decides to find the killer herself. The trouble is Frances's habit of digging up secrets and lies, which leaves every eccentric and friendly villager with a possible motive. Each answer Annie turns up puts her closer to someone with something to hide, and she begins to fear she will inherit her aunt's fate along with the fortune.

This is a cozy-leaning murder mystery in a quaint English village, with a closed circle of suspects and a past that keeps surfacing. The two time periods, 1965 and the present day, frame the puzzle. Expect a whodunit with a light surface and a darker current underneath.