4,5* ( )

Oy. Well, what can I say. Every so often I come across a book that just doesn't do it for me at all. Here we have a revenge thriller with psychopath mortician/loving mommy in the leading role, and I just flat out didn't care for it.

First of all, I figured out the BIG reveal so early into the story that it was just a matter of waiting for the end to prove myself right. tick tick tick yawn. Not that that hasn't happened with me and crime novels more than a few times, but so early into the game just really wrecks things beyond repair, and nothing after that point made me even question my guess.

Second, this novel is so over-the-top violent that it was not at all a pleasure to read.

Third, and what really gets me, is that everything happens and falls into place so unrealistically easily in this novel that there was no challenge whatsoever in the reading. I mean, if you're going to write a "thriller," it should pretty much thrill, and this one just didn't.

Oh well. Enough people here have enjoyed it and rated it highly, so it's probably once again just me being uber-picky. ( )

You never want to get on the wrong side of this woman! Blum is happily married with 2 young children. Her husband, Mark is a Policeman and she is a successful undertaker. Then, her world falls apart after her husband is killed in a hit and run. When she finds out that it wasn't an accident but murder, all hell breaks out. This is the first book in a trilogy, not sure what else she can that she didn't already do in this book. Not for the faint at heart! ( )

A dark and disturbing tale of vengeance and violence, Woman of the Dead is the first novel by Bernhard Aichner to feature Blum, mother, mortician and murderer.

When Blum's beloved husband is killed in a hit and run she is nearly destroyed until she learns that he was deliberately targeted. The photographer, the cook, the priest, the huntsman, and the clown - these are the men responsible, and Blum is going to make them pay.

Woman Of the Dead has one of the most memorable character introductions I've ever read. The story opens with a during a defining moment in Blum's life before leaping forward eight years to place us in the present. Blum is the devoted wife of Mark, a police detective, the doting mother of their two young daughters, and the owner of a successful funeral business. She is both hero and anti-hero in this story, grieving widow and ruthless killer.

There is raw and visceral emotion in The Woman of the Dead. The pain and numbness of Blum's grief and the horror of the abuse Danya experienced at the hands of the mysterious cabal. There is also grisly and often explicit violence, this isn't a story for the squeamish.

The plot is quite straight forward, perhaps stretched a little thin at times. It's a fast paced story that builds suspense, though astute readers shouldn't have any problems guessing the identity of the last man standing.

Woman of the Dead is an unusual story, with a rather extraordinary protagonist. I'm curious to see how the series develops. ( )

This book, the first of a trilogy, has been a #1 bestseller in Austria so I requested an ARC of its English translation to be released on August 25. I cannot understand why it was a bestseller.

Brünhilde Blum, the anti-heroine of the novel, is a mortician. After the death of her adoptive parents, Blum is happy until her husband Mark, a police detective, is killed in a hit-and-run accident. When she discovers that he was in fact murdered, she sets out to avenge his death. To do so, she must track down five men who are responsible for that crime and other heinous acts as well (abduction, unlawful imprisonment, assault, rape, and murder).

It is the character of Blum that will immediately catch the reader’s interest. She chooses to be called Blum, “Just Blum, because she hated her first name, she’d never been able to bear it. . . . A name that had nothing to do with her . . . A name that she had banished from her life. Only Blum now. No Brünhilde.” And it is not just her name that she banishes; like a cross between Dexter and Lisbeth Salander, she has no difficulty removing people from her life. She is a damaged individual brimming with hate and a desire for revenge.

The book has a strong opening, but its initial promise is not kept. The plot becomes very improbable. Blum must find five men known only as the photographer, the priest, the cook, the huntsman and the clown, yet she manages to track them all down with minimal difficulty. Everything just falls into place. She is repeatedly able to break into homes and kill and dismember people without being caught; it’s almost as if she commits the perfect crime over and over because any problems are easily removed. And she is able to do all this even when she takes unbelievable risks such as watching to see who will find a decapitated head she has left in a very public place. She is successful even though abductions are not planned very carefully. For example, only once a man has been abducted does she begin “looking for the perfect house, a house with a drive they can disappear down in broad daylight.”

Some of the events make very little sense. One minute a co-operative witness says he doesn’t recognize the name Dunya : “’Don’t know her. There were so many of them, the whole staff hostel was full of foreigners. . . . I never paid attention to the names.’” Then later he says that a particular man “’was often at the hotel when Dunya worked there’”? A man described as the “village pastor” lives at the presbytery of the cathedral in Innsbruck? He is abducted near his home but then his car, not used in the abduction, is found near the Italian border? Someone intent on blackmail wouldn’t have extra copies of photos, especially in the age of digital photography? Would a photographer bother printing photos when they can be kept on a computer? One minute, Blum pleads with a man, with whom she has already had sex, “’I just want to see you,’” but then when they meet, she pushes him away, telling him “he must understand that she is thinking only of Mark.’” She doesn’t expect this man to suspect her motives but she later worries that he is going to be suspicious of someone else whom he has no reason to suspect? Would the smell of urine escape from a casket? After gagging and tying up an unconscious person and wrapping blankets around him before placing him in a coffin, is it logical to put “tape around the casket to make sure there is no chance of escape”? One minute, Blum learns about an actor’s whereabouts from “media reports” but then blames his “production company” for that information?

The writing style is weak. Sometimes there are lengthy conversations between two people, conversations not interrupted with identifiers, so the reader has to keep track of who is saying what. At other times, there is needless repetition. For instance, at the end of one conversation, Blum observes that the man with whom she had spoken is not guilty: “He didn’t know what she was talking about . . . He was surprised. He racked his brain and found nothing, his astonishment was genuine.” Later, after a second conversation, she thinks, “Briefly, she believed in his guilt. But now she realizes that he had nothing to do with it. . . . His face had given that away. In the restaurant and now here, his astonishment had been genuine, as had the confusion in his eyes.” And I have rarely read about such expressive eyes and hands. There are statements like, “She says these things without words, only with the touch of her fingertips” and “Blum knows that she has made a mistake, she was thinking only of herself; she knows she will hurt him if she tells him to go away. She knows that, and his fingers can feel it” and “That’s what his raised hands say and his eyes” and “his eyes said no” and “Only his eyes say she reacted too slowly.”

I read the following statement about the author: “Writing with breakneck narration and rapid-fire dialogue, Bernhard Aichner is poised to follow in the steps of Jo Nesbo, Camilla Läckberg, and Jussi Adler-Olsen to become Europe’s new breakout star in crime fiction.” Having read and enjoyed Nesbø, Läckberg, and Adler-Olsen, I will be genuinely surprised if this prediction comes to pass. Was something lost in translation?

Note: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog: http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/ ( )