How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley (released January 2026) is a formally daring debut that has taken BookTok by storm. Though the title sounds like a “how-to” guide or a dry academic text, it is actually a razor-sharp, dark, and often funny coming-of-age story set in the 1980s.

The Plot
The story is set in Marley, Wyoming, in 1986. It is narrated by Georgie, a 12-year-old girl who, along with her older sister Agatha Krishna, is “brown in a very white place.” Their father works in the Wyoming oil fields, and their mother is an immigrant from India.

The sisters’ lives are upended when their Uncle Vinny moves in from India. He is a predator who begins to abuse the girls, but because he is their mother’s last remaining link to her home country, the girls feel they cannot tell her. Agatha Krishna decides there is only one solution: they must kill him. She convinces Georgie that the “British” are ultimately to blame for Vinny’s behavior, linking their personal trauma to the larger history of colonial violence and the Partition of India.

Key Appeal Notes

• Experimental Structure: The book is interspersed with magazine-style personality quizzes (e.g., “Do You Have What It Takes to Kill?”) that reflect the “teen girl” culture of the 80s while highlighting the loss of innocence.
• The “Blame the British” Logic: The sisters use postcolonial theory as a survival mechanism. If they can trace their uncle’s rot back to the British Empire, they can justify his murder as an act of “decolonization.”
• 80s Nostalgia with a Twist: It features 1980s touchstones like the Challenger disaster, Princess Diana, and Halley’s Comet, but viewed through the lens of outsiders who don’t quite fit the “All-American” mold.
• The “Ventriloquist” Voice: Georgie addresses the reader directly, often challenging our expectations of what a “brown immigrant story” should look like. She refuses to be the “pitied victim.”

Why it’s Trending in 2026

• Genre-Blending: It’s being marketed as “Literary Thriller meets Dark Comedy.” It satisfies the craving for a murder mystery while providing the intellectual depth of a postcolonial critique.
• The “Surprise Ending”: Like many of the books we’ve discussed, this one is famous for a twist that recontextualizes the entire narrative of the “murder.”
• Indie Darling: As a debut novel with a “nervy” voice, it has become the “it-book” for readers who want something more challenging than a standard domestic thriller.