Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, by Maureen Johnson & Jay Cooper (pub. 2021); genre: Humor/Parody

Written in the style of a travel guide, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village hilariously both mocks and celebrates the tropes of classic British mysteries, such as Agatha Christie novels.

When I first saw this book, I was scrolling through books on my Kindle, and I laughed out loud upon reading the title. “That’s cute,” I thought, “I bet this’ll be a great novel.”

I was wrong. I should have downloaded an excerpt or something.

This is not a novel. As I said in the summary, this is a travel guide, made up of tongue-in-cheek commentary accompanied by gothic-style illustrations rather than a standard fictional narrative.

The first section guides you on a tour of the village, describing the features of the village as well as the residents. I particularly like the description of the village pond: “Those ducks didn’t get fat on bread” (p. 16). There are also helpful survival tips included with some of the descriptions, such as the one that accompanies “Anywhere With a Vat:”

“In English Murder Villages, vats exist for the express purpose of drowning people…If anyone offers to show you their vat, say you need to get something from your car, start the engine, and run them over. The constable understands this sort of thing. Tell him about the vat” (p. 21).

The second section takes you on a tour of the manor and introduces you to the residents and their guests. Helpful tips about avoiding death are included, such as this information found on page 64: “Higher Floors: Stay low. They can’t throw you off the balcony if you never go up there…Lower Floors: Marble busts and giant vases fall down, not up. Get to higher ground.”

There is a quiz after each section, to determine how well you’ve absorbed the knowledge imparted to you, and whether or not you would survive.

I loved this book. The writing and illustrations are both amusing, and the tone manages to be cheerful despite the topic being death. It’s a bit on the short side, and a fast read, but those are not necessarily detriments. The only issue I had was with the formatting of the Kindle version; some illustrations are with the accompanying text, some aren’t; some take up a whole page, some don’t, some pages only have one line of text. That’s not the fault of the book, though. If I could go back in time, I would order a physical copy instead.

Overall, I would recommend this book to people who like murder mysteries and/or humor/parodies, and don’t mind light-hearted takes on arguably dark topics. I think the physical copy would make a great gift, but wouldn’t suggest buying the digital copy. This book is available on Amazon and through Penguin Random House.

Rating: 5 stars