Dante, Jun, and Farah will be love interests to the main character
As seen in Chapter 1 of the prequel, The Deadliest Gambit, these three characters have completely new designs, which is usually a sign that the character in question is a love interest. This would also fit the Two Guys and a Girl format of love interests for murder mystery books (as seen in Veil of Secretsnote , The Unexpected Heiress, and Murder at Homecoming).- Confirmed.
Steve will be a Red Herring
So far, Steve is the only character that has acted rude and hostile towards Finn, while the others at least act civil. Because of his behavior, the story could spend a couple chapters making players think he's the killer, only for him to be a red herring, maybe even becoming another victim. Nick planned the whole thing as a Secret Test of Character for Finn
The way Nick talks in the prequel and the first chapter suggests that he may have been suicidal before his death, mentioning about how "it will be over soon", nobody can know what I'm going through", and other similar phrases. Knowing he was going to die anyway, he may have asked one of his friends to kill him ahead of time and planned the murder mystery party as a way to get all of his friends together one last time. With the suggestion in Chapter 3 that it might have been an Inheritance Murder, it's possible that Nick planned the murder mystery party to test Finn's detective skills; he knows they're a murder mystery author and wanted to see if they could apply those skills in a real-life setting, maybe even leaving everything to them if they pass the test (the will seen in Chapter 3note might be a decoy for this reason). The killer did not read Finn's murder mystery novels
Because if they did, they would know that a typed suicide note (as was the case with Nick's murder) would clue Finn in on Nick's death not being a suicide, since the same tactic was used in one of their murder mystery novels.- Likely jossed, since the second murder victim is killed the same way as the woman in the manuscript of Finn's next novel, and it's implied that the killer took the idea from there.
Nick was secretly in love with Finn
They've been established to have been best friends for a long time, and Nick planned to give away his entire fortune after being inspired by Finn, which seems like something he would only do if he had some kind of feelings for them. Finn planned the whole thing
As crazy as it sounds, it's still a possibility. Prior to the start of the story, Finn was shown to be struggling with writing their latest murder mystery novel. For reasons unknown, they were the only one unaware of Nick's will, despite their influence on him being the reason why he chose to give away his fortune. When trying to piece together the clues, Finn comes up with some pretty wacky scenarios as to why certain suspects would kill Nick (which the love interests point out in Chapter 10). The end of Chapter 10 reveals that Medhani was killed with the exact same sword that the murder victim was killed with in Finn's manuscript. With all this in mind, it's possible that Finn set the whole thing up; they knowingly encouraged Nick to give away his fortune, so that the murderer would kill him. They left their manuscripts out so that they would be inspired to use the same sword to kill Medhani. They played along with the whole thing until the killer was caught so that they could make themselves out to be a hero, then planned to use the whole experience as inspiration for the novel they were struggling to write for so long (in a similar vein to Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct).