How to Solve Your Own Murder

Frances Adams, later Lady Gravesdown, is the second narrator whose story is told through her journals from the 1960s and whose death forces Annie to begin detective work. While her journals never explicitly say she is attractive, the girls around Frances are obsessed with her to a murderous extent and the local Lord Gravesdown (Ford) pursues her over more sophisticated-seeming London girls, implying there is something about young Frances that is extremely attractive. Her love of puzzles is a learned trait from her relationship with Ford, as her journals don’t exhibit the level of engagement in solving riddles that her later will and murder investigation boards show.

Frances is the cozy mystery’s stock character of the small-town busybody who often gets murdered for their knowledge. This is also Frances’s trajectory, though there is a major difference. The busybody is usually a side character whose later death illuminates the first. Frances, however, is the focus of the puzzle and her snooping has gone on for decades before she stumbles on the solution to the problem she is trying to solve—the question of what happened to her friend Emily. Perrin has taken what is traditionally a minor character and made her the focus. In keeping with the form, however, her death does illuminate the first.

Frances’s obsession with her own fate and finding out what happened to Emily provides the darker side of the narrative. While Annie keeps the mystery cozy, Frances’s life demonstrates the theme The Warping Nature of Obsession. Despite beginning with the noble intention of finding justice for one’s childhood friend, Frances takes it to an obsessive level, and her character descends from an attractive, envied teenager to a snooping, suspicious, and despised murder victim at the end.

Detective Rowan Crane is the stock law enforcement support character for a cozy mystery protagonist who also presents romantic potential. He is in his early 30s and has dark hair with long eyelashes over brown eyes. He is described as non-judgmental yet always evaluating. One of the things Annie finds attractive is that he has a reassuring attitude and his voice has the sound of authority. While she at first doesn’t trust her feelings about him, he ends up proving his reliability and is the one who carries her to safety after Joe attempts to kill her. His encouragement of Annie’s detective abilities and fairness toward her are combined with his deep knowledge of the town, making him a valuable asset for the protagonist as she attempts to solve the murder.

Emily Sparrow is the manipulative, strong personality that sways the direction of the toxic friend group from the earlier timeline of the novel. She is the first murder victim and seems to be the bird reference that betrays Frances, since she gets pregnant with John, Frances’s boyfriend, in an attempt to trap Lord Gravesdown into marrying her. Her intense jealousy of Frances’s life along with an emotionally abusive mother causes her to act in disturbing, imitating ways that the rest of her friend group notices and, in Rose’s situation, worry about to the point of killing her. Her death results in the fracturing of the group and is the impetus for Frances’s personal downfall, as Frances spends the rest of her life trying to figure out both Emily’s disappearance and how to safeguard her own murder. The revelation that Emily is Annie’s grandmother and the discovery of her body are key moments in the novel, emphasizing the number of secrets contained both in the town of Castle Knoll and Annie’s childhood home.

Rose Forrester Leroy is the third member of the teenage friend group. She is described as looking like Snow White when she is young. She marries Bill Leroy, Ford Gravesdown’s driver, and later owns the hotel in Castle Knoll. Her son Joe is one of the two local ambulance drivers.

While Emily is presented as the obsessive friend in the trio of teenage girls, Rose is the truly warped and obsessed one who goes so far as to murder to save her friend Frances from further pain. Her son Joe is the second killer of the later narrative, and both use the same motive for committing murder, which is to protect the person they love most from pain and harm. The first few chapters of the story imply that Rose is the killer by having Annie suspect that the white roses (a symbol of friendship) are the murder weapon. Small hints throughout point again to her guilt, such as when she throws away the sparrow necklace Emily gives them or uses Frances’s makeup and clothes. Even when Frances is dead, Rose still takes her cardigan and puts it on before leaving the manor house in Chapter 13, a telling detail as to the nature of the two women’s relationship.