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I closed my review of How to Solve Your Own Murder, the first book in the Castle Knoll Files series, with saying I’d be fine with the first standing alone and not sure I’d read another. Well, I did decide with the third coming out soon that I’d give more of the series a shot. And this time I enjoyed the book more. Here’s why, most likely: I didn’t come into it with an expectation of it being “enormously fun,” as the first was billed. I was just ready to read a cozy mystery that I knew was going to be fairly good. And so it was.
Annie Adams solved the mystery of who killed her Great-Aunt Frances. But Aunt Frances had been involved with several sketchy people and situations in her youth in particular. And now some of those old crimes and secrets are popping up decades later, in part thanks to Frances’ murder and that investigation.
The story again goes back and forth between the present day, as Annie is just thinking about settling in a bit to the huge old home she’s inherited, and the past, when Frances found herself torn between two very different men.
Now, just a few months after Frances’ murder in her home, another person is killed in the house. This time, it’s Peony Lane, the fortune teller who foretold Frances’ death so many years earlier. And she had just told Annie some cryptic warnings about her future.
So Annie again delves into the past, by reading Frances’ diaries and looking through her many files, and talking to old folks who have some secrets. She also ends up spending a lot of time in the company of the handsome young detective she met during the first book.
How to Seal Your Own Fate has all the usual elements, put together nicely, to deliver a satisfying whodunit. I will definitely be reading the third one soon.
Rated: Mild. Profanity around 5 instances of moderate profanity, 10 uses of mild language, and fewer than 10 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes a mention of postcards of undressed women, a number of instances of kissing, and a couple of mentions of sex but no details. Violence includes several murders, and a number of references to a character who had drugged and assaulted women (but with no details about those events).
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