An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good is Helene Tursten's darkly comedic collection of linked stories starring Maud, an 88-year-old Gothenburg woman who has lived rent-free in her late father's spacious apartment since his death when she was eighteen. Outwardly a frail, solitary retiree who travels and surfs the internet from her father's old armchair, Maud is in fact a meticulous and unrepentant killer whenever life inconveniences her — a celebrity neighbor coveting her apartment, a long-ago lover's inconvenient engagement, or anyone else who crosses her.

Translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy, the stories balance wicked humor with a distinctly Scandinavian noir edge: Maud exploits society's tendency to underestimate elderly women, using the very invisibility of old age as cover for take-no-prisoners pragmatism. When a body finally turns up in her home, suspicion is slow to fall on the seemingly harmless octogenarian upstairs.