How to Solve Your Own Murder

The cozy mystery evolved directly from the Golden Age classic mysteries created by writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, who established the tropes of the genre in the 1920s and 1930s. The tradition of using English villages (as in Christie’s first Miss Marple novel, Murder at the Vicarage) continues in many of these novels. How to Solve Your Own Murder borrows heavily from this plot device wherein writers juxtapose the idealistic beauty and sedate pace of the town with passionate emotions lurking below the surface that drive residents to murder. Frances expresses the reoccurring theme of Appearance Versus Reality in Small Towns when she says of the picturesque Castle Knoll “…the more I listened and the more I watched, the more I learned. And everything I learned was vile” (291).

Locations such as nearby farms, manor houses, and churches are all typically featured, as are the pubs and local hangouts. Perrin’s novel keeps this tradition by having Annie live at the manor house but move through the village, the local farm, and the church while she interacts with various citizens.

In the cozy mystery, villages come with a standard cast of character-types, which differ slightly depending on the country in which the story is set. The vicar, the farmer, the lord of the manor, the doctor, the publican, the local police, the solicitor, and the town gossip (or the town busybody) often clash with the protagonist sleuth, who is usually an outsider brought in to solve the crime. The protagonist’s status as an outsider creates obstacles in what are generally closed communities but also gives them an advantage of seeing situations and people more clearly than those rooted in the community. How To Solve Your Own Murder is unique in that Perrin has expanded the role of the local busybody, giving what is usually a minor figure (who often dies in the second or third act) the main spotlight and a significant reason for their snooping. Frances’s character is the result of this expansion of the stock character.

Part of what gives the cozy mystery its title is the fact that the darkness of the murder is not the focus as much as the puzzle and solution. The victims, while sometimes gruesomely and creatively killed, are never graphically depicted. Frances’s bloody hand seen behind the desk is the strongest image of death in the novel. Similarly, reasons for the murder are never as dark as in the mystery genres that evolved alongside the cozy mystery, such as the gritty noir or spy thriller. Motives like money, inheritances, jealousy, and love affairs are standard. Annie’s lighthearted cracks during some of the more serious moments and her ironic references to classic detective work help balance one of the novel’s themes that is on the darker side for a cozy mystery, The Warping Nature of Obsession. Despite this darker theme, How To Solve Your Own Murder keeps the cozy mystery tradition of not taking itself too seriously and makes the puzzle it presents its priority.