I read the first book, ‘An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good’ back in 2019 and was delighted by the mischievous psychopathy of Maud, a solitary and financially secure woman in her eighties for whom other people are not entirely real, except in so far as they help or hinder her in taking care of herself. Over the course of five linked stories, Maud demonstrated that, when a person becomes a problem for her by posing a threat to her or those she cares for or by disturbing her peace or attempting to steal from her, she is happy to solve the problem permanently with a bit of well-managed violence that results in a death that either looks accidental or cannot be reasonably attributed to Maud herself.

I’d expected, ‘An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed‘ to be more of the same but it delivered more than I’d expected. It was also structured as six interlocking stories and in most of them Maud continues her habit of problem-solving through homicide. What lifted the book above a series of anecdotes about about ingenious murders committed by an unlikely killer is that these stories are about eighty-eight-year-old Maud remembering her past and coming to terms with shaping what remains of her future. We see her as a young girl, defending her older, mentally challenged sister from two local bullies. We see her at the start of her chosen profession as a language teacher and learn the extreme lengths she had to go to secure her position. We see how, as an adult, her older sister was a burden to Maud and what Maud did about it.

I liked that we saw all of these both as they happened and as memories that still have a great power over Maud. It made Maud both more human and more frightening. I enjoyed being led to reappraise the Maud I’d met in the first book and understand her as someone willing and able to kill but who has no hunger for it. Over the course of her often unhappy life, killing is just something that has sometimes proved necessary.

Maud’s memories are triggered as she takes part in a Swedish-speaking guided tour of South Africa, a place that Maud has fond memories of. At first, it seems that the trip is mainly a way for Maud to escape the attentions of Inspectors Huss and Nyström, who still suspect her (rightly) of a murder committed in the first book, but it soon becomes clear that Maud has another agenda. She’s planning for the end of her life and looking for somewhere and some way of spending it that will have meaning for her.

Of course, Maud can’t make it through a whole trip through South Africa without needing to solve another problem with violence but this time it’s not her main focus and besides, her victim absolutely deserved to die.

The ending is perhaps a little contrived, even bordering on the sentimental, but I found it satisfying. I felt that I now understood Maud and I wished her well.