The book is pure fun, although slender. Another volume of Maud’s misdeeds would be most welcome.
Five connected stories about a murderous old Swedish lady.
Maud has a good thing going. At age 88, she’s lived in a large apartment rent-free for 70 years because of a clause in an old contract. Never married, she loves to travel alone and to be alone. In the first story, "An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems," a rare event happens: Her doorbell rings. Jasmin Schimmerhof, a 40-year-old avant-garde artist who lives in the building, stops by to say hello. The daughter of celebrities, her past includes drugs, multiple divorces, and tragedy. Her current art project strives to “unmask the domineering tactics of the patriarchy,” meaning that her small apartment is filled with phalluses—some even hanging from the ceiling. She is delightfully overbearing as she constantly tries to weasel her way into Maud’s good graces. But Maud isn’t stupid or senile, and she knows Jasmin is up to something. Once Maud figures out what it is, her solution is drastic, funny, and final. Maud is a seasoned world traveler who once, at age 18, had been engaged to Lt. Gustaf Adelsiöö. He’d emphatically broken off their engagement on learning her family wasn’t rich. Now, in “An Elderly Lady on Her Travels,” she reads in the newspaper that he is a wealthy 90-year-old widower about to marry the 55-year-old Zazza, whom ex-teacher Maud knows as her long-ago student, a schemer and a failed soft-core porn actress. When Maud arranges to get near her at a spa and then overhears Zazza’s plans to take control of Gustaf’s estate, Maud devises an emphatic countermeasure. And then in “An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime,” she deals with “The Problem” in the apartment above her. Maud’s murders always have plausible motives, and she is a sympathetic character as long as one keeps a safe distance. Each story takes its sweet time to develop and concludes with a juicy dose of senior justice.
The book is pure fun, although slender. Another volume of Maud’s misdeeds would be most welcome.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64129-011-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Koontz widens his canvas dramatically while dimming the hard brilliance common to his shorter winners:1995’s taut masterpiece, Intensity, and 1998’s moon-drenched midsummer nightmare, Seize the Night. This time the author takes up mind control, wiring his tale into the brainwashing epics The Manchurian Candidate and last spring’s film The Matrix. The laser-beam brightness of his earlier bestsellers fades, however, as he stuffs each scene with draining chitchat and extra plotting that seldom rings with novelty. Martine “Martie” Rhodes, a video-game designer, has developed a rare mental disorder: autophobia, fear of oneself. Meanwhile, her husband Dusty’s young half-brother, Skeet Caulfield, has decided to jump off the roof of a building the two men are repairing—because Skeet has seen the Angel of the next world, who has revealed that things are pretty wonderful there, and he wants to come on over. Martie’s best friend, real-estate agent Susan Jagger, is newly coping with agoraphobia, fear of the outdoors. What’s more, Susan knows she’s being visited and raped at night by her separated husband, Eric, although all her doors and windows are locked. She can’t remember these rapes, but her panties are stained with semen. So when she sets up a camcorder to record her sleeping hours, she gets a huge surprise after viewing the tape. How these mental and physical events have come about—ditto the psychiatric background of the Keanuphobe millionairess who shows up (yes! she fears Keanu Reeves)—has something to do with the ladies’ psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Ahriman, the son of a famous dead movie director whose eyes the doctor keeps in a bottle of formaldehyde and studies, in hopes of siphoning off Dad’s inspiration. Although the whole story could have been told to better effect in 300 pages, Koontz deftly sidesteps clichÇs of expression while nonetheless applying an air pump to the suspense: an MO that keeps his yearly 17-million book sales afloat.
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10666-X
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Utter non-scents.
Die-hard Yankee candle maker Stella Wright (Murder’s No Votive Confidence, 2018) gets caught up in a trans-Atlantic murder plot.
Stella thoroughly enjoys her trip to Paris even though her mother, perfume expert Millie Wright, who’s scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “The Art of Scent Extractions” at the World Perfumery Conference, gets preempted by a murder. Sadly, once they’re back home in Nantucket, things get even weirder. Stella receives an anonymous note threatening her mom if Stella doesn’t turn over a secret formula hidden in Millie’s bag. Her mom can’t help because she’s in the hospital courtesy of an overenthusiastic attempt by Stella’s cat, Tinker, to befriend her. While trespassing on a suspicious sailboat, Stella meets U.S. Agent Sarah Hill, who warns her that well-known anarchist Rex Laruam plans to disrupt the upcoming Peace Jubilee using a stolen formula he secreted in Millie’s bag after he stabbed the agent guarding it back in Paris. Ignoring the advice of her friend Andy Southerland, a Nantucket cop, to leave detection to the professionals, Stella tries to unmask the elusive Laruam. As she spies on a bevy of unlikely suspects, the plot spirals further and further out of control: There’s a Canadian couple staying at an Airbnb run by Stella’s cousin Chris who whisper sweet but suspicious nothings in the dark, a shovel-wielding schoolmarm, a gang of old geezers who have a collective crush on Millie, a surprise 30th-birthday party planned by Stella’s beau, Peter Bailey, and an even more surprising impromptu airplane ride.
Utter non-scents.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2141-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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