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 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.

It's Christmas morning and I've just read the first story about Maud, a woman in her eighties, who discovers that she can get away with murder. I was cheering her on, which isn't quite in the spirit of good will to all men but what can i say, the person she killed deserved it.

Thanks to Kaethe for the recommendation.

Merry Murderous Christmas everyone.

This is the first ever Moomin book.  It is also the last of Tove Jannson's Moomin works that I have read (I haven't read all of her brother Lars version of the comic strip).  It's also the worst of the Moomin works, but saying that being the worst Moomin work is not exactly saying it is terrible.  It is good and prefigures the masterpieces that are to come.  I have held, for almost the last thirty years, that Tove Jannson is by far the greatest of all Children's books authors.  To some degree this work is for those who agree with me or who are very close to agreeing with me.  It is for Moomin completests only.  For anyone new to the Moomins, I would recommend starting with Comet in Moominland, which is the immediate successor to this work.  In what follows, I am going to presume a familiarity with all things Moomin.

This work is very much a proto-moomin work.  Most noticeably the Moomin snouts are drawn thinner and the Moomins don't resemble the white hippos that they later did.  Sniff appears in it, referred to as "the little creature".  The plot is essentially a picaresque adventure with Moomintroll and Moominmamma trying to locate Moominpappa and having many adventures along the way.  The writing is influenced by Hans Christian Anderson and the feelings of wonder and of anxiety and dread are there in spades.  The writing is not as sophisticated and incidents and characters are not as finely drawn as the later work.  It is more straightforward and less subtle than anything that would follow.  The book itself was began in 1939 and then completed and published in 1945.  I have always thought that World War II and the Finnish experience in it lurks unspoken behind the Moomin novels and picture books.  Here the sense of anxiety is almost relentless, and nature, as it so often does, is both beautiful but strange and sinister.  That is compounded by the fact that the Moomins are represented as considerably smaller than they are in later works.  They are about 4 inches high, although this is not consistent.

The art in the book lacks the expressiveness of the later Moomin illustrations, but there are some absolutely beautiful illustrations.  In particular the Sepia toned landscapes show all of Tove Jannson's genius.  Many of the incidents are clever, but they are more influenced by fairy tales than would be true later.

This book was out of print for a very long time and that's because its the weakest, but it is still a very good work and enjoyable.  It is also a must have for any moomin-fanatic to understand where Moomin Valley comes from and the evolution of Tove Jannson's genius.

This book is a mystery with some thriller elements.  There is nothing wrong with the book, but I do not see why it became a phenomenon.  There is a mystery with another mystery book-ending the main mystery.  I was not entranced by that, because when we came back to the book-ending mystery I did not really care.

The characterization of the two main characters is fine.  The other characters, especially the main villain (and any other villains) are horribly cliche.  The writing style is simple, moves fast and easy is to read, but lacks all literary merit.

The mystery itself is fine, and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a pretty good character.  The whole thing is much too long.

Its a perfectly fine mystery.  I suspect that the movies may be better than the book, because it is more that kind of a thing really.