Helene Tursten

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed is a sequel to An Elderly Lady is Up To No Good, both by Helene Tursten. These books tell the dark & humorous story of Maud, an unassuming yet very clever 88 old lady. Taking advantage of her age and acting feebler than she is, Maud has gotten away with a number of murders. Her victims all found out that one shouldn’t try to take advantage of the elderly.

This second book finds Maude off on an expensive luxury trip to Africa. As she travels she thinks show more back on her life and how she took matters into her own hands in order to achieve her hopes and dreams.
Dark and delicious events mark her life and the slow steps to her success. Now she finds she has plenty of money but, unfortunately no family or friends to inherit when she passes. When she stumbles upon one of fellow travellers committing a horrendous crime she steps in and saves the victim. This leads to her finding a substitute family and allows her finalize her plans for the rest of her life.

For a ruthless murderer, Maud has the ability to make the reader root for her and feel pleased that she gets away with her crimes. Admittedly her victims are usually extremely unlikable and deserve the fate they get. While I love reading about Maud, I wouldn’t feel safe with her in my life. The way she can play the unassuming, helpless old lady yet be so tough and resourceful brings these dark stories to life.

I thoroughly enjoyed An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed and my hopes are that there will be more tales of her murderous escapades to come. show less

What a scary old lady. I wouldn't want to be acquainted with her, lest she find a reason to murder me. There is something I like about her though - how she spends her retirement travelling, such that she is running out of places to go. That must be something all readers envy. (But then I recall how she gets the time to do this, by wittingly or unwittingly killing her sister, whom she has to take care of. Shudders.)

Five quietly sinister and entirely plausible tales of a woman in her eighties who discovers she can get away with murder

This is a delightfully mischievous read, especially at Christmas, when one of the stories is set.

In Maud, Helene Tursten has produced as an intriguing villain: an old lady, happily solitary and financially secure, for whom other people are not entirely real, except in so far as they help or hinder her in taking care of herself. When people become problems, that is they pose show more a threat to her or those she cares for or disturb her peace or attempt to steal from her, Maud is happy to solve the problem permanently with a little bit of well-managed violence that results in a death the either looks accidental or cannot be reasonably attributed to Maud herself.

I can see that Maud's actions show her to be a psychopath but I still found myself cheering for her. The people she killed seemed to me to deserve killing. I'd certainly have thought of doing what Maud did but I wouldn't have had the nerve or the emotional distance to act on my impulse. I'm hoping that my admiration for Maud is a sign of the power of Tursten's writing and not my own incipient psychopathy.

I admired the way Maud could, when it served her purpose, turn herself into the not-quite-all-there, harmless-old-dear that people expect to see. She uses the way the young see the old as both camouflage and as a weapon. I'm more than twenty years younger than Maud but I can already see how my perceived age changes how I'm treated unless I act against type and I can imagine the glee of being a predator disguised as someone seen as so low threat that they're almost invisible.

The book contains five stories:
- An elderly lady has accommodation problems
- An elderly lady on her travels
- An elderly lady seeks peace at Christmas time
- The antique dealer's death
- An elderly lady is faced with a difficult dilemma

With each story, we learn a little bit more about how Maud came to her present circumstances. We don't get an explanation as to why she is as she is, rather we get a picture that her circumstances rather than he character have changed She now has the independence and the protective camouflage available to her to be herself and get away with it.

The last two stories are two different perspectives on the investigation into the death of an antique dealer. Tursten uses the antiques dealer's death to bring Maud to the attention of both of the detectives she's currently writing series about: Irene Huss, with ten novels in a series that started in 1998, and Embla Nyström, Huss's protegé with two revels in a series that started in 2014.

I tried "Inspector Huss" the first book in the series a while ago and abandoned it. My encounter with Maud was much more fun. The difference may be down to the twenty extra years that Tursten had practised her craft between the two books but I suspect that it's also to do with a change of translators and to listening to the audiobook version. So, I've decided to try the second Inspector Huss book, "Night Rounds" as an audiobook, in the hope of finding another series to read. show less

*An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good* by Helene Tursten was such a fun, delightfully dark read! There's something incredibly entertaining about reading a story where the protagonist is unapologetically on the wrong side of the law. This old lady truly lives up to the title—she is absolutely up to no good, and I loved every minute of it.

What makes this book so fascinating is how she acts on all those intrusive, unwelcome thoughts that most people have and immediately dismiss. You know those show more fleeting moments where you think something terrible and then quickly move on? Well, she doesn't just think them—she *does* them. There's a scene where an old man has his cane leaning against the wall, and she has that passing thought: "What if I took it?" And she actually does take it! Obviously he has the cane because he *needs* it, but she doesn't care at all. It's shocking and darkly funny at the same time.

Everything she does is completely selfish, and yet I found myself completely engaged, trying to understand what's going on in her head. Watching her devise elaborate plans to make her life easier—regardless of who gets hurt or helped in the process—and then watching her execute those plans was genuinely captivating. There's a cold calculation to her actions that's both disturbing and strangely compelling.

I also really enjoyed the glimpses into life in Sweden, where the story is set. The cultural details and everyday life there are so different from what I'm used to in the US, which added another layer of interest to the book. It made the reading experience feel fresh and gave me a window into a world I don't usually get to see.

This is a dark comedy done right—morally questionable, wickedly entertaining, and surprisingly thought-provoking. If you're looking for something different and don't mind rooting for someone who's definitely the villain of her own story, this book is absolutely worth picking up. show less