An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten: Quietly Removing Problems

I found this short story collection through a video. Honestly, I want to read more short stories, both individual ones and other collections. I need to figure out how to find them. If you know of any way, let me know in the comments.

Synopsis

This collection contains five stories following an elderly woman solving problems through murder.

Book Information

Genre: Fiction
Category: Adult
Explicit violence: Some
Explicit sex: None
Content warnings I noticed: Some graphic violence
This is a short story collection.

Review

The prose is good. Accessible and easy to read.

Each story follows a different situation. Each situation affects the 88-year-old woman. Each title gives the reader an idea of what to expect. The titles are also engaging.

Four of these stories are written in third person past. However, one is written in first person past. This is the fourth story which follows a different character. That one, along with the fifth, follow the same events. I would normally not bring this up since it’s a short story collection and each story is individual, but this is unique. It follows the events of one character, so the change of POv makes no sense to me, even if it follows someone else. It didn’t ruin my experience, but it’s strange.

I’m not sure if these stories were supposed to be funny, but they were. I think it has to do with the scenarios. While they’re unlikely, they make sense because of who we’re following. Also, it’s just funny that an elderly woman is killing people and no one suspects her because of her age. The very idea only occurs to one person.

Because these are short stories, we don’t delve into the character the same way we would in a novel. However, there’s a lot to her. Readers get a great idea of who she is.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great short story collection. It’s a very fast read in audio. It’s about three hours and I read it in one sitting. I rate it four stars.