How to Solve Your Own Murder

Well-fleshed out characters, a few 'good guys' to get invested in, twisty, dramatic, a bit too close to thriller tropes I don't enjoy, such as a liberal helping of awful people doing awful things, or awful things happening to people, or people who've had awful things happen to them doing unlikeable things. A bunch of juicy scandals, for those who like that sort of thing, and a dual timeline with various mechanisms to draw out the tension.

Other downsides from my perspective:

Something about the protagonists in both timelines were giving me early 2000s historical romance heroine, and I've been there, done that, had my fill.

Never read a book where so many people bite their lips.

If you're looking for my thoughts on this book in particular, you can stop reading here, what follows is the only reason I'm going to remember this book fondly, because it provided me with a great revelation about my taste in mysteries, that will benefit me as a reader going forward, and probably knock a few dodgy prospects off my TBR. I've had a fairly mystery heavy reading year this year, and though it resulted in a number of duds, it has the benefit of providing me with a lot of evidence for my conclusion.

I just went through my list of read books on Storygraph, filtered for 'mystery', for the last two years I've been seriously back into reading. Anything that might be categorized primarily as a modern mystery, I didn't really like. Whether a publishing trend that seems to favour thrillers over mysteries, has led to more mysteries being written like thrillers, or whether a writing trend rewarded by loyal audiences, has led to more mystery-thrillers that cannot be separated out into straight mysteries, it looks like it's a safe bet for me to eliminate any book that is a contemporary mystery on the basis that it's probably going to read more like a thriller.

If it's a classic (Christie), if it's funny or charming as much as it's mysterious (Osman, Sandford - Virgil Flowers, McDonnell - Stranger Times), if it's fantastical or sci fi but not too dramatic (Older - Mossa and Pleiti, Lafferty - Midsolar Murders, Cogman - Invisible Library - of these, I'm only continuing in the last one!), if it's historical (Raybourn - Veronica Speedwell, Kinsey - Lady Hardcastle), if it's fairly cozy (Burns - Baker Street, Popp - Pies Before Guys, Priest - The Booking Agents, Wallace - Evenfall Witches B&B), I enjoy it, but flat out mysteries, not so much!

Here's hoping my rant/revelation helped somebody else!

⚠️Child abuse, statutory SA