In her warm, witty second novel, Welcome to Murder Week, Karen Dukess (The Last Book Party) combines a fake murder mystery (set in a picture-perfect English village) with murkier questions of family history and identity. Dukess's protagonist, risk-averse Cath Little, joins two fellow Americans in an entertaining quest to solve a fictitious murder while digging for answers about her mother's past.

Comfortably rooted in Buffalo, N.Y., Cath is (mostly) happy working as an optician, running the business she's inherited from kindhearted Mr. Groberg, a mentor and surrogate grandfather. But as she's sorting through papers after her mercurial mother's death, Cath discovers her mother, Skye, had booked a surprise trip for the two of them to visit Willowthrop, a charming English village in the Peak District, and take part in a murder mystery game put on by the locals. Cath doesn't want to go, but her ticket is nonrefundable, and Mr. Groberg employs a perfect metaphor to nudge her forward: travel, he points out, can be as clarifying as getting new glasses, making everything old now new. Though Cath is skeptical, she takes the leap, hoping the trip at least will offer some closure regarding her mother's death.

When Cath arrives in Willowthrop, she's charmed by the pastoral landscape and relieved to hit it off with her two roommates: Amity, a cheery romance novelist searching for fresh inspiration in writing and life, and Wyatt, who adores his husband, Bernard, but is restless and bored working in Bernard's birding shop. Together, the unlikely American trio dives into the game with gusto, but they keep turning up odd coincidences tying Cath's mother to Willowthrop. Although Cath wants to focus on the mystery (who "killed" gossipy hairdresser Tracy Penny, and why?), she can't ignore the growing sense that her mother booked this trip to this particular village for a reason.

Dukess's narrative deftly combines classic murder-mystery elements--including a few delightful twists on stock characters--with Cath's quest for information about Skye's past. The villagers of Willowthrop, acting in roles for the game, include several English stereotypes: the village busybody, the aristocratic horsewoman, the officious constable. (While the actors generally stick to their roles, there are a few hilarious character-breaking moments, including supposedly dead Tracy whispering a plug for her organic hair products). But Cath soon encounters one man who appears genuine: Dev Sharma, a handsome local bartender with alluring dark eyes and a knack for distilling artisanal gin. As Cath and her teammates prowl around the village in search of clues, she makes time to drop by Dev's bar, wondering if this unlikely trip will help open her closed-off heart.

While the details (and humor) of Willowthrop's murder plot will doubtless appeal to fans of Agatha Christie and Midsomer Murders, the novel's depth goes far beyond a whimsical murder-solving romp. Cath is forced to confront her long-held feelings of abandonment and the questions left unresolved by Skye's death. Dukess layers themes of motherhood, identity, and abandonment even in the murder plot, drawing a parallel with Cath's larger (if initially reluctant) quest to solve the twin mysteries of her mother's connection to Willowthrop and Skye's constant need to reinvent herself. While Cath struggles with the knowledge that she will never have all the answers regarding Skye's actions, she does achieve a certain level of resolution after digging into an intriguing bit of local history. Cath's teammates, too, both find their own inspiration for moving forward after helping Cath solve both the fake mystery and the real one.

Throughout Welcome to Murder Week, Dukess plays with the notions of truth versus fiction, familial expectations versus imperfect realities, postcard-worthy facades (in both village and lives) and the messier, more complicated truths that lie beneath. "Fictional chaos is a holiday, a beautiful distraction," Cath muses after the conclusion of the Willowthrop murder mystery. "We can go along for the ride and shiver from the danger without worrying that we'll get hurt. And in the end, all questions will be answered, all actions explained." Real-life mysteries, as Cath and the reader both know, are much murkier and less easily solved; they require true emotional investment, with no guarantee of a tidy ending. But, as she also learns, some real-life questions demand investigation, whether to pin down names and details or simply to resolve emotional turmoil. Although Cath learns a few lessons by solving the fake murder, the book's emotional heft lies in her willingness to step out of her safe, narrow existence and into a life that contains greater uncertainty--and far greater possibility for joy.

Full of quirky, engaging characters and delicious British details, Welcome to Murder Week is a cream-tea treat for mystery fans and a touching story of a woman coming to terms with her family history. --Katie Noah Gibson

Karen Dukess (photo: Nina Subin)

Karen Dukess has been a tour guide in the former Soviet Union, a newspaper reporter in Florida, a magazine publisher in Russia and a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations. She is an alumna of Brown University and Columbia University and the author of The Last Book Party. Her second novel is Welcome to Murder Week, coming from Scout Press/Gallery on June 10, 2025.

Tell us about the inspiration for Welcome to Murder Week.

This book was born out of a trip I took to England with my sister in the fall of 2022. I had seen some photos, posted by an author I knew, of the Peak District--it was so beautiful, and looked just like my fantasy of the English countryside. My sister Laura and I have similar tastes in books and British culture, and we had never traveled together on our own, but we decided to do it. And it was a dream. People were very friendly, and we didn't see many other Americans. Especially after the pandemic, the Peak District doesn't get a lot of American visitors.

We went to Bakewell in Derbyshire, and it was like stepping into all the novels I had loved for years--Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Agatha Christie's. I was seeing it all through the lens of fiction. We did tons of walking and going to pubs, drinking tea and visiting grand estates and walking the Jane Eyre trail. Every night I would post on Facebook about our adventures, and my posts reflected the giddy, silly mood I was in. It was just such a lark, and so fun.

I had recently completed a novel set in Russia, where I lived for six years. But I was trying to sell it right after Russia invaded Ukraine, so it felt rather anachronistic. After my England trip, I had other ideas bubbling up--so I decided to write about Americans going to England and having the same kind of experiences I'd had. Having fun was my main motivation for writing; I wanted to enjoy it. I thought, I will amuse myself, and hopefully it will amuse other people. And it was the most fun I've ever had writing anything.

The book pays tribute to Agatha Christie and Golden Age English mysteries, but it's a modern story. How does it fit into that mystery tradition and also offer something fresh?

I'd never written a mystery before! I'm a mystery reader, but not a huge one--though I did read a lot of Golden Age crime while writing this book. (And I watched a lot of Midsomer Murders!) Having said that, I've always been drawn to stories that have mystery and secrets in them. We read those kinds of stories to find out what happened in the past. Withheld information is often what keeps us reading. There are so many stories that are not classified as mysteries, but they have mysteries in them. You're chasing a question: What's going on here? What explains this? During my research, I also discovered some contemporary mystery writers. Getting to know the genre better has been really fun.

The book's plot centers on a fake murder mystery, but the characters don't always know who's involved (and/or who's telling the truth). How does the book explore the concept of truth vs. lies?

I think that's interesting in so much of fiction: what a character says versus what they're actually thinking. Or: a character believes a certain narrative about their life and makes decisions according to that, and then they discover that that narrative is not necessarily true. Cath, my protagonist, has spent all this time rebelling against her mother's way of living, thinking she was flaky and flighty, but never knowing why her mother was that way. It has led Cath to live a narrower life--reacting against her mother, trying not to be like her mother. She's been burned by her mother but is also curious. And she learns some things throughout the book, but she never really figures out her mother, not completely. She has to find a way to move forward without knowing everything.

It's also been a fun experience to talk about the fake murder. People then start to think it's not a "real" mystery--but it is a real mystery! It's just not a real murder. The true mystery involves Cath's story and her search for answers about her mother. When you read a traditional mystery novel, part of the joy is that you know the mystery will be solved. But Cath's story is a little more complicated.

Cath is an optician, but she can't always see what's in front of her. How does the book play with themes of seeing and vision?

I wanted Cath to have her own business, doing something she had done since she was young. It was inspired by an optician in the town I grew up in, a woman who had worked at an optician's shop since high school. She worked for this man for years and basically took over the business from him. And when it was quiet in the shop, she would always read. In Cath's case, she sometimes chooses not to see, or she insists on seeing her own version of things, which is not necessarily the truth. Mr. Groberg, her former boss, encourages her to travel, telling her that it can be like getting new glasses. It struck me as a perfect metaphor for a trip that will really change how Cath sees her mother, and ultimately herself.

How is this novel similar to your first book, despite their very different settings?

In some ways, my novels are very different from one another--my first book is a literary coming-of-age story set in the 1980s. But I think it's true that writers often write the same story again in different forms. My books are both about women who are basing their decisions on a narrative about the world, or about their family, that they've accepted, but which turns out not to be entirely true, or won't bring them happiness. They both learn something that makes them change their approach to life. In some ways, I'm always writing about the stories that we tell ourselves, and how confining those stories can be. Sometimes you need something that jolts you out of your story. Both my novels are about women making those discoveries. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams