A teenaged girl is told she’ll be murdered. She spends the next 60 years trying to figure out who’s going to murder her before she is, in fact, murdered. Then it’s up to the great-niece she’s never met to solve her murder.
This book by Kristen Perrin starts in 1965 when Frances Adams is at the local fair with her two best friends when a fortune teller predicts Frances’s death. The exact quote is, “Your future contains dry bones. Your slow demise begins right when you hold the queen in the palm of one hand. Beware the bird, for it will betray you. And from that, there’s no coming back. But daughters are the key to justice, find the right one and keep her close. All signs point to your murder.”
Fast forward 60 years or so and Annie is in her twenties and still trying to find her way in the world. Her mom is a painter whose career has had ups and downs over the years. It’s currently at a low point, but she’s getting ready for a new exhibition and is hoping that will relaunch her career. Annie never knew her dad and doesn’t seem to care to know him.
Her mom’s Aunt Frances actually owns the house Annie and her mom live in, and it’s expected that when she dies, Annie’s mom will inherit everything.
Annie is an aspiring novelist who wants to write murder mysteries. She’s just finished her first draft and sent it off to some agents, but didn’t bother to edit it first, so it’s no wonder she isn’t hearing anything back.
That’s when she gets a letter from Aunt Frances summoning her to Castle Knoll, her estate out in the English countryside.
As soon as she gets this summons, it’s assumed that said summons is an indication that Frances has cut her niece out of the will in favor of Annie. Despite their precarious financial position, Annie’s mom doesn’t seem too concerned about it. She couldn’t have been close to her aunt if she never took Annie to meet her and Frances never came to London to visit.
Annie has just arrived at the solicitor’s office, where she was supposed to meet with the solicitor, Walter, and her Aunt Frances, only to find out that the location of the meeting was changed at the last minute to the estate. So, she and Walter head up there, joined by Walter’s son, Oliver, and the wife of France’s nephew by marriage, who loses no time in belittling and snapping at everyone around her for no apparent reason.
When they get there, they find Frances dead on the library floor, apparently having been in the process of arranging some flowers.
Turns out Frances arranged flowers for all the local businesses, including the church. Not that she needed the money. She just enjoyed doing it and it kept her busy, especially after her husband died.
At first, it seems like she might have died of natural causes, but an autopsy found she had been poisoned, but in such a way as to make it look like she died of natural causes. But of course the murderer must have known a woman as paranoid as Frances Adams would have paperwork drawn up to demand an autopsy ASAP.
So Walter, Oliver, Saxon (France’s nephew by marriage), Saxon’s wife, and the local detective are all gathered to read Frances’s will. Convinced she’s been murdered, Frances makes the inheritance of her estate contingent upon the solving of her murder. Whoever solves her murder gets everything. They have one week to crack the case, and if they can’t solve it in that time, or if law enforcement solves the case before either of them can, then the estate gets sold to a developer who will tear down the gorgeous house, tear up the lawns and farms, and put up some monstrosity. All the proceeds from the sale will go “to the Crown.” And if one of them gets arrested for any reason, they get disqualified.
Annie obviously has a disadvantage, since she didn’t even know Frances. Not only did Saxon know her, but he grew up in the house where she was murdered, so he knows it like the back of his hand, and he knows everyone in town because it’s one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone.
Yes, this means they all knew Frances, and while I don’t think anyone had a reason to hate her, not many people seemed to have a reason to like her. Saxon’s wife doesn’t seem to like anyone, although Saxon seems nice enough. Frances was a huge pain in the ass at the police department because she was constantly calling them any time she heard a strange noise or felt like someone was following her.
In the course of her investigation, Annie finds Frances’s diary from 1965, which not only covers the fortune tellers prediction, but the events from the prediction up until one of Frances’s best friends, Emily Sparrow, goes missing.
The book goes back and forth in time from Annie investigating the murder of her great-aunt to Frances describing her life as a pretty normal teenager in a small country town where there’s nothing to do. She has her group of friends, she has a boyfriend, there’s some mild trespassing and experimenting with sex in less-than-totally-private areas because there’s no such thing as a totally-private area when you’re a teenager, so you take what you can get.
Turns out Frances’s boyfriend cheated on her with Emily, who is now pregnant, although no one is sure who the father is. Around the same time she slept with her best friend’s boyfriend, she also slept with the owner of Castle Knoll, who’s only a few years older than they are, hoping to trap him into marriage.
But we know as we read all this that Frances — not Emily — is the one who ended up marrying him, which seems like justice after Emily’s backstabbing and manipulation.
In addition to being a fun murder mystery, the book raises the question of obsession and self-fulfilling prophecies. Except for the part about murder, the wording of the prophecy is extremely vague, leaving Frances to try to figure out what is meant by “the bird” or even “daughter,” since she never had any children of her own. And of course the comment about “holding the queen in the palm of one hand” provides no shortage of opportunities to freak out, especially in a country in which all the money has the queen’s face stamped on it.
My only quibble about this book is that Annie allegedly can’t stand the sight of blood, and if that’s the case, how does she deal with her period every month? Does she get lightheaded every time she has to change her tampon? I kept waiting for that to turn out to be some sort of red herring, as it was in Gone Girl, but nope, Perrin apparently expects us to believe this.
Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I can’t wait for more in this series, especially with a hint that Annie’s dad might turn up to make some trouble now that she’s rich and famous…