An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good, Helene Tursten

It’s been a while since I read a good crime book. The last one I’ve read was, I think, Yoko Ogawa‘s Revenge. Anyway, An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good is unexpectedly… cozy. There was something super calm about the whole thing, maybe because dear old little Maud does her murders in cold blood. She’s 89 years old, for goodness sake, but I just know that she killed her sister all those years ago. I just can’t prove it.

I have this soft spot for stories about lonely women (Eleanor Rigby is still, and will always be my number one favorite in this department). I have no idea if it’s because I can relate to them or if I imagine myself ending up like them; but I should at least say that there is something quite comforting about the story of a lonely woman living her best life because loneliness can be beautiful too.

Maud is your typical grandma… well, she may not be the type to bake you cookies or cook you creamy chicken macaroni soup when you’re upset, but the type that would tell you stories about her greatest love who didn’t end up with her over cups of coffee and cigarette smoke. At least that’s how I imagined her, even though the book said she didn’t like smoking tenants. She likes to keep things to herself and she protects her peace, her rent-free apartment, and her solitude at all costs—yes, even murder.

Maud kills everyone and anyone that threatens her peace and comfort. And she makes her murders look like accidents, leveraging her guised frailty and old age. Besides, who would suspect an eighty-something-year-old woman of committing such crimes? Decades of being all by herself made sure nobody knew that Maud is mentally sharp as a tack, highly calculating, and physically much more capable than she lets on.

Another fascinating thing about Maud is her being a seasoned traveler. With her century-old fortune, I figured this is very much easy. Just imagine having a hard time deciding where to go next because she had been to everywhere on Earth at least twice. Nah, I am too broke and too poor and too… scared to relate. And even much too scared to travel with the knowledge that there’s a dead man inside my house and it’s basically a crime scene.

An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good is a short and cozy (I want to use the word soft but nothing is soft about Maud, 😅) read that’s perfect to keep you wide awake on nights you couldn’t sleep. I mean, why waste time tossing and turning on your bed, right? Read this book instead. And I promise to give you more recommendations.

See you in the next chapter!