Review by Linda Kay Hardie
Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase it.
Katarina Bivald’s third installment in her cozy mystery series about a Swedish author begins in the viewpoint of Berit Gardner’s friend Ian Ahmed, a British detective inspector on sick leave with a broken leg. A typical cop, Ian can’t relax or leave his job behind and uses binoculars to spy on the rich family on the next small island over.
Berit lives alone on a tiny island in the Stockholm archipelago (an area filled with 24,000 islands). Her home is a family legacy, jury-rigged over the decades from a one-room cabin to an almost-complete house (no indoor toilet yet). Two other homes on the island are seldom occupied. Yet only a short ferry ride away is Sweden’s capital city, Stockholm, the largest urban area in the Nordic countries, with a metropolitan area population of 2.5 million. While Berit has lived in England full-time for years, she’s come home to this solitude for a melancholy purpose that she keeps secret, which we discover from her point of view later in the story. |
| Image Source Poisoned Pen Press |
Interestingly enough, the remote location is a major character in the story. This murder could not have taken place anywhere else than this dark and pessimistic setting. The damp, gloomy, and dark fall weather seems to be a partner in various evildoings. I haven’t (yet) read Bivald’s previous novels in this series, so I don’t know if those share the stoic Nordic demeanor found here. They’re set in England and France, countries with their own distinct personalities from each other, and both vastly different from the land of imperturbable Swedes who seem perpetually resigned to whatever fate wants to give them.
Initially, the story seemed to move slowly, but that didn’t bother me because the pace fit so perfectly with the doleful location and Ian’s cumbersome plaster cast on his leg. The more deliberate rhythm of this archipelago life intentionally slowed my American brain down enough to understand a completely different way to live. And, perhaps, to die.
The denouement (because “climax” is too frenetic a word) shocked me, and yet it made perfect sense after I’d lived this Nordic life for a short time. Now, please excuse me while I go find Katarina Bivald’s previous Berit mysteries. Shh, I have reading to do.
To enter to win a copy of The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die Quietly, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line "die quietly,” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen November 14, 2026. US residents only and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. If entering via comment please include your email address so we can contact you. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.
Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section in Kings River Life and in our mystery category here on KRL News & Reviews. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. And check out our new mystery podcast which features mystery short stories and first chapters read by local actors!You can click here to purchase this book.
Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.Linda Kay Hardie is an award-winning writer of short stories in various genres, including crime, horror, and SF/fantasy (often with humor). She also writes essays (usually about cats but sometimes baseball), poetry, and is working on longer works. Her stories appear in many anthologies, including Lunatic Fringe, Gag Me With a Spoon, A Killing at the Copa, Sex & Violins, and The Perp Wore Pumpkin from White City Press. She’s the vice president of Short Mystery Fiction Society, as well as a member of Horror Writers Association, Queer Crime Writers, Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and Cat Writers Association. Linda Kay is an Abyssinian Rescue Ranger, a volunteer foster mom in purebred cat rescue, and a professional teddy bear builder. See her portfolio at sierraarts.org/user/linda.kay.hardie. Tune in to the podcast Misti Media Live! on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at 5 p.m. Pacific time/8 p.m. Eastern. Author Linda Kay Hardie joins Misti Media editor-in-chief Jay Hartman to talk, argue, and rant about writing and publishing. See more at youtube.com/watch?v=7JLJLrvP-5s
Comments
Post a Comment