How to Cheat Your Own Death
From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Solve Your Own Murder comes the third book in the Castle Knoll Files
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected 28 Apr 2026
-
- £9.99
Publisher Description
*Preorder Now*
'Captivating' R. L. Killmore, author of A Cinnamon Falls Mystery
'Smart, original and lively . . . I loved it' Gilly MacMillan, author of The Nanny
'A slice of pure murder mystery joy' Kelly Mullen, author of This Is Not A Game
'A mystery with razor-sharp stakes. I was enthralled . . . A total pageturner!' Emily Freud, author of The Cliffhanger
The latest instalment in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Castle Knoll Murder Mystery series, in which Annie Adams and her Great Aunt Frances team up across decades to solve two interlocking murders
***************************************
LAURA NEVER MEANT TO LIE. BUT OLD HABITS DIE HARD.
When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Fliss, the budding artist Laura had just taken under her wing.
Annie is no stranger to murder - after all, she's solved a few cases already. And something about the way Fliss died feels familiar. She's seen a case like this before. Or read about it, rather, in the journals of her dead Great Aunt Frances, whose close friend was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way: with her heart surgically removed from her chest.
As threats pile up on Laura's doorstep, it soon becomes clear that she's next, and that she's hiding something . . . With her mother's life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it's too late?
From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, follow Annie and Frances as they race to bring a killer to justice.
***************************************
Praise for the Castle Knoll Files
'VERY funny' Jennie Godfrey
'Plenty of twists and red herrings' Guardian
'Smart, twisty, and original' Heat
'Thrilling' G. T. Karber
'Superb' Glamour
'Wildly original' Elly Griffiths
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Perrin's clever third whodunit set in the English village of Castle Knoll (after How to Seal Your Own Fate) fleshes out the series' backstory with a dual timeline mystery. In 1968, Frances Adams enrolls in the psychology department of University College London after a fortune teller informs her that she will be murdered (a prediction that comes true, decades later, in the first book in the series, How to Solve Your Own Murder). At school, Frances develops a knack for amateur detective work, and she probes the case of an acquaintance who's found in an alley with her heart excised. Frances's investigation alternates with a contemporary one set in Castle Knoll and featuring her great-niece Annie Adams, who's haunted by a similar prediction from a psychic that "it will be your own heart, if left unguarded, that's ripe for the knife." Not long after she hears the prediction, Annie finds a corpse in a garbage bin, its heart removed, lying on top of an assortment of paintings by Annie's mother. Perrin provides a keenly satisfying answer to the core question of whether the same killer is responsible for both murders, decades apart. Ingenious plotting and a menacing atmosphere make this irresistible.
