54 pages • 1 hour read
Kristen PerrinHow to Solve Your Own Murder
Kristen PerrinFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 34-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary: “The Castle Knoll Files, October 7, 1966”
In 1966, Frances doesn’t like how the town is talking about Emily now that she has disappeared. Despite Frances refusing to see Ford, he begins sending letters and little presents. John attempts to revive their relationship and one day tells her he is considering studying theology and Walt the law. He tells her that they never made it to Chelsea because Walt’s car died. They never saw Emily and don’t know anything about her disappearance. They saw Ford’s Rolls Royce go by but didn’t see who was in it. John is convinced Ford killed her. He praises Frances for her forgiveness and generosity. When they wanted revenge on Emily, Frances wanted to make sure the baby was taken care of and people weren’t hurt. Her unhappiness at how people are speaking about Emily enforces this goodness. Frances feels she is being drawn away from this into darkness, and she chooses to keep looking for Emily’s killer even if it kills her.
Chapter 35 Summary
Annie wakes up at 3 am and knows what Frances figured out when she found Emily’s body in the trunk. Later, she talks to Beth about allowing them to keep the farm if she wins. She asks Beth for help taking evidence to Mr. Gordon. She calls Dr. Owusu and tells her about Magda’s scheme. She asks for help hinting to Magda that Annie has solved the murder. Dr. Owusu doesn’t want Annie to put herself in danger and agrees only when Annie says Owusu can contact Detective Crane.
Chapter 36 Summary
Annie meets John Oxley, the vicar and Frances’s old boyfriend, who Annie now knows is her grandfather. Seeing the physical resemblance between them makes her feel like family. He tells her about how careful Peter and Tansy were keeping him away from Laura. Ford paid for a paternity test so John knew he was the true father. He and Frances continued to meet for coffee, and he confesses to missing those visits. Annie offers to continue them as she has decided to stay in Castle Knoll.
Chapter 37 Summary
Annie’s mother is thrilled that her art exhibit was a success, and she’s selling a lot of work. She asks Annie to tell Walt he doesn’t need to send the extra checks. She finds she can’t tell her mother what’s going on. Annie figures out that Frances stopped the payments when she changed her will after finding Emily’s body but that Walt continued payments to Annie’s mother so as not to leave her stranded financially and in fact paid for the last few supplies that made Laura’s show possible. Walt had been generous and wasn’t the murderer. Annie gets two phones, knowing Saxon will take one of them. She uses one to record their conversation on the way to meet Magda. He gives her money and instructs her to ask for ketamine. He parks in a concealed place and dials Magda on Annie’s second phone. Annie and Magda agree to meet in a parking lot. Annie has Jenny ready to call Detective Crane at 8:00. It is now 7:45. Magda’s ambulance isn’t the one that shows up as Annie has hoped. Joe Leroy helps her in the ambulance and closes the door, telling her she is about to have an overdose.
Chapter 38 Summary: “The Castle Knoll Files, January 10, 1967”
In 1967, Frances has agreed to go with Rose to Gravesdown Hall for a Christmas party. Her correspondence with Ford has continued, and Frances feels closer to him. Rose says Bill, the driver, asked her to marry him. Frances is worried she is putting a lot of her happiness on Frances’s relationship with Ford working out. Ford has decorated to reflect some of Frances’s tastes, and they have a wonderful time. They kiss, and while Frances is annoyed that she notices Rose doing the same across the room, she enjoys being there. Ford gives her a fur-lined green coat to replace the one with the stag buttons she lost.
Chapter 39 Summary
In the present, Annie knows Frances assumed it was Ford in the Rolls-Royce going to see Emily but all she saw was Bill, Rose’s boyfriend who had permission to drive her anywhere. The approaching needle makes Annie feel faint but she asks Joe how his mother Rose is coping with what he did to her best friend. Annie says Rose was even more obsessed with Frances than Emily was. Joe rages that Rose protected what she loved and he did the same. Frances was destroying Rose. Annie fights as he tries to pin her down, and he complains she should stay still like Frances. Annie figures out that he sent the bouquet knowing Frances would panic when she saw the needles and hemlock and call the paramedics. She thought Joe was helping her by giving her an injection. His knee is on Annie’s chest and she can’t breathe. He says his mother will finally heal and be free of Frances, who never treated her well and was going to turn her in for murdering Emily. Annie knows he is moving too fast for Detective Crane to get there in time. She feels the needle and flails, throwing him off balance. She kicks him but then passes out.
Chapter 40 Summary
She wakes up with Walt and Beth pulling her out of the ambulance. They close the doors on Joe. Detective Crane is just arriving and the sight of blood on her arm makes Annie faint again. She wakes up in Detective Crane’s arms and he says Joe wasn’t able to inject her. She doesn’t think she can handle the hospital, and they agree to take her home. Once there, Annie explains to everyone how she figured it out. The journal said Rose accused Emily of always stealing Frances’s things and imitating her, but the photo album revealed Rose was actually the one wearing Frances’s clothes. Emily went back for the typewriter that proved to her parents she’d taken a secretarial course, a typewriter Annie found when she was little. Bill took Rose to Chelsea in Ford’s car and was probably waiting in the car or parking it while Rose killed Emily. Annie thinks that since the police were involved, she disqualifies herself from winning, but Walt disagrees and declares her the winner. She is relieved her mother can stay in the house but is also sad as it means Great Aunt Frances is gone. She feels peace knowing she was the right daughter and got justice for Frances and her biological grandmother. She says she wants to throw a memorial for Frances and invite the entire village.
Chapter 41 Summary
Annie has started chronicling her time at the estate in journals like Frances. She has gifted the Rolls Royce to the Foyles so Archie can start a vintage car business instead of growing marijuana on their farm. Annie’s mother warns her that her father may show up again now that they are both in the news and making money. Detective Crane takes Annie to see Rose at a mental health facility she’s been admitted to after her conviction. Rose says she won’t apologize and that Emily needed to be stopped. Annie points out that Rose’s threats were found by Frances, not Emily, and fed Frances’s paranoia. Rose doesn’t respond.
Chapter 42 Summary
It is October and Annie’s mother, Jenny, and the rest of the village are at the memorial on the front lawn of the estate featuring a recreation of Frances’s study. Oliver reveals that he left the threats on Annie’s bed, which he’d found in Frances’s study. He felt powerless and couldn’t decide to help or intimidate. He has been fired from his development job, which is a relief for him. Detective Crane warns Annie that Rose’s lawyers intend on being tough on her. He seems like he is going to grab her hand but doesn’t. Annie reflects that there is a closet of her Great Aunt’s clothes that probably have adventures and investigations linked to each. She has also found a trunk full of empty notebooks that seem like they are inviting Annie to fill them.
Chapters 34-42 Analysis
In the cozy mystery, the final section is used to trap and reveal the murderer. Annie wakes up at the beginning of the section knowing the murderer’s identity but doesn’t reveal her discovery until four chapters later. This enables Perrin to extend the suspense while Annie tries to outsmart Saxon, and having the murderer revealed in action (showing up in the parking lot) rather than in dialogue creates a dramatic moment of revelation to which the entire novel has been building. Annie talking through the solution in Chapter 40 is also a standard plot device of the genre, revealing all the clues and explaining the full picture. Since the murder is solved, the final two chapters wrap up the psychological plot line, and Frances’s reputation gets the justice Annie feels it deserves.
While cozy mysteries tend to focus on the puzzle more than character development, this section allows both Annie and Frances to become more complex characters, revealing things about themselves just as the murderer is being exposed, raising the overall tension and stakes to a personal level. In Chapter 36, Annie meets John Oxley, her grandfather, and has a feeling of family in which “a new dimension has suddenly been added to the word for me” (305). Directly after this she declares her intention to make Castle Knoll her home. In committing to the town before she’s won the inheritance, Annie doubles down on herself and the people she’s met. Her trajectory is reversed, going from a drifting Londoner with little family to gaining a solid family and community. With this decision, the theme of Appearance Versus Reality in Small Towns is again reflected through both Annie and Frances, revealing the town’s dual nature. In these chapters, Frances looks around at the village and remarks, “Everything I learned was vile” (290). When John warns her not to lose her faith in people, she disregards his warning and intentionally lets herself be “drawn into the dark” (296). She changes from the girl in the center of the community to a snooping, selfish, and ultimately isolated person. While Frances articulates that she only sees horrible behavior in Castle Knoll, Annie finds family and love. These opposing outlooks affect each character’s end. Frances’s negative point of view results in her alienation and eventual murder since she begins to neglect and dismiss people who love her. Annie’s openness enables her to see a potential father figure in John and trust people like Mr. Gordon and Detective Crane, who in turn give back to and rescue her. The theme’s finale with Annie inviting the entire town to a memorial concludes the novel on the positive side of the theme, showing the charm and goodness a small community exhibits when people come together.
The theme of The Warping Nature of Obsession is brought to a conclusion in a few different ways in this section. Perrin shows that obsession can have lasting generational effects and that anything taken to such an extreme, even if it’s love, is destructive. Joe’s motive for murder, which mirrors his mother’s obsessive love, is one of the major examples. Frances’s obsession with herself and her missing friend is also one of the strongest examples of the theme, as her obsession changes her entire personality from light to dark and the resulting selfish, manipulative behavior reverberates through generations with the potential to stretch further and destroy an entire community. Annie’s sympathy toward Frances’s and Rose’s situations provides the antithesis example of the theme. Annie shows a single-minded interest in solving the murders, but it is unselfishly motivated. Rather than pulling away from others, Annie trusts and works with people like Detective Crane, Dr. Owusu, and Beth.
The theme of The Power of the Written Word is also wrapped up in this section, with the help of the continuing motif of journals and writing. Frances’s final, key written evidence comes in the form of the story of the Rolls Royce heading to London. Her written recounting of her conversation with John, when she makes her choice to descend into emotional darkness, is also a powerful personal revelation that drives Annie’s determination to solve the mystery. The novel ends with a final instance of the motif, revealing the empty journals that are seemingly waiting for Annie. Indeed, the final lines “Putting pen to blank paper, I started writing” create a frame story and make the entire novel How To Solve Your Own Murder one final, large repetition of the motif (353). It is through the medium of the written word that Annie can literally take control of the narrative and bring justice to her Great Aunt Frances’s reputation and murder.
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