An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Swedish author Helen Tursten is a collection of stories about Maud, an eighty-eight year old woman living a solitary life, no family or friends.
She doesn't bother anyone - and you don't want to bother her.
An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems introduces Maud as she realizes a young celebrity living beneath her covets her apartment - Maud has lived rent free due to a legal clause and sees no reason to move. An Elderly Lady on Her Travels sees Maud visit a local spa where an old flame is celebrating his upcoming marriage to a trollop - she has never visited such a spa and thinks it's high time she did. An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime has her solve the problem of a belligerent husband who berates the wife. Things get more serious as Maud is involved with An Antique Dealer's Death - told by an observant neighbour to the police - followed by An Elderly Lady Is Faced With A Difficult Dilemma where those events are retold by Maud.
Helen Tursten writes the bestselling Detective Inspector Irene Huss series and brings Huss into the last two tales. Maud is tough as nails, hiding in the guise of an old lady - the kind who needs some extra help shopping, she must be nearly deaf, shuffling with her walker. However, her diabolical mind has no qualms about removing those pesky weeds of society. Filled with irreverent black humour, the stories turn from light to dark as the police become involved and she turns her act up a notch. The final story was the least successful to me as it reveals her a genuine sociopath, with the 'accidents' ramped up into a premeditated murder that takes time to complete. This elderly lady is no Miss Marple.
Tursten blends the stories well, telling the reader new information about the characters each time, while they remain stand-alone stories - each was written in a different year, initially for a Christmas anthology. If you like a dose of humour with your social justice, Maud will show that you never know what lurks inside a person, and most neighbours never bother to look.
2018 / Hardcover / 173 pages
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