It is a truth universally acknowledged that a modern mystery novel must have a recommendation from Janice Hallett to stand any chance of success.

OK, so maybe this isn’t strictly true. But Murder in the Family is the second book to cross my path this month with such a recommendation on the cover. And like Grave Expectations, Murder in the Family has a fascinating premise. It’s an epistolary that combines news clippings, a teleplay, and a few communications between the cast and crew of a true crime streaming series. The series itself follows six experts as they unravel a twenty-year-old cold case. But unlike most such series, this one has access to and even cooperation from the victim’s family – one of whom produces the series.

Just to get it out of the way – this is an EXCELLENT epistolary. Like the best entires in the genre, it’s easy to get immersed in the story, to feel like you’re part of an investigation. That said, the puzzle is (I think) not really solvable? It’s kind of sprung as a twist based on unguessable or unsearchable information. And – surprisingly given how much I usually care about fair play in mysteries – I wasn’t mad about it.

And, unsurprisingly, this got me thinking again about epistolaries. How are epistolaries different from “regular” mysteries? And why am I so much more accepting of surprises?

A framing game

For me, it starts with the framing of the genre. Reading any epistolary brings the hand of the author into full focus. When you’re reading a curated set of materials, it’s impossible to forget that someone had to “select” them. Not only that – but epistolaries have to trim a LOT of fat – it’s hard enough to convey stories through curated materials, rather than the usual approaches to writing. And so I tend to come into epistolary novels poring over every single detail – it’s a bit harder to sneak clues by.

In Murder in the Family, for instance, Hunter starts with a series of CVs for the main cast. These CVs are rich with characterizing details, from the contents to their formatting. Even before you read the text, it’s easy to tell which characters take themselves seriously and which characters view the whole CV exercise as a farce. And that immediate sense of added detail forces me to look just a little more carefully at every other piece of information presented. After all, if Hunter spent all this time to make the CV look right, it stands to reason that she spent as much time on the actual contents.

It’s a weird bit of reading tension, because you want immersion. And in the case of epistolary, immersion means that someone selected these specific materials for your reading pleasure. If it weren’t important, it wouldn’t be here. And so I find myself so much more attentive to all the little details in an epistolary.

The unit of mystery

This sets up a bit of a different unit of analysis than in other mysteries – at least for me. I will confess that when reading a plain old mystery, I’m frequently vibing, trying to solve based on atmospherics and psychology. I prefer Marple and Poirot to the fiddliness of a physical mystery, and I can’t bother with timeline reconstruction. So while I’m happy to accept those kind of puzzles as fair play, I typically end up admiring the art rather than participating.

But epistolaries unlock the contrarian in my brain. Suddenly, I find myself seeking out contradictions in written statements, trying to guess along. For some reason, it feels more feasible to root out all the red herrings in epistolary form, to put all the pieces together. The act of reading an epistolary creates hundreds of little dopamine rushes as all the little puzzles come together. It’s like the “unit of mystery” is the document-level details, instead of the overarching plot.

This leaves me usually with a little bit more puzzle-solving credit to spend when taking in the solution to the mystery. After all, I’ve just spent the whole book trying to figure out all the different threads laid out by the author. And so if there’s some bigger puzzle that wasn’t clued perfectly… well, so much else was done so well, and I’m willing to accept it. This kind of reverses my attitudes and engagement relative to traditional mysteries, where often red herrings are simply ferreted out by the protagonist and my focus is the main solve. Instead, because epistolaries give me the tools to engage at that level of detail, I’m ok with some surprises in the overall story.

Balancing clues with story

Which brings us back to Murder in the Family , where Cara Hunter sets up a tricky, perhaps impossible puzzle and surrounds it with tons of tasty red herrings. It’s the red herrings you get to engage with, even as you start to notice a broader pattern of… missing? External? information. The whole puzzle clicks in the end, even if it’s not fully clued to let the reader in for a solve. But in this case, the surprise ending adds some meat to the story bone.

Because, ultimately, when I’m reading a mystery, I want 1) some puzzles to solve; 2) some characters to love; and 3) an honest attempt at actually solving said puzzles by said characters. If I deride some stories as “mystery-themed adventures”, usually it’s because the writing fails the third condition, with the characters off on totally the wrong track. And if I get frustrated with other traditional-style mysteries, usually it’s because the character work is… shallow. Here, Hunter gives us an intriguing investigative team that feels worth learning more about, even as they track down a killer. It’s a mystery with two layers: the current investigation, and the cold case it centers on. And that’s more than enough puzzle for me.

Until next time – stay cozy, and stay curious!