Reads with Rachel on YouTube has really made me want to read "An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed" by Helene Tursten (Amazon link: https://amzn.to/45Lzlxg).
Summary: "Don’t let her age fool you. Maud may be nearly ninety, but if you cross her, this elderly lady is more sinister than sweet.
"Just when things have finally cooled down for 88-year-old Maud after the disturbing discovery of a dead body in her apartment in Gothenburg, a couple of detectives return to her doorstep. Though Maud dodges their questions with the skill of an Olympic gymnast a fifth of her age, she wonders if suspicion has fallen on her, little old lady that she is. The truth is, ever since Maud was a girl, death has seemed to follow her.
"In these six interlocking stories, memories of unfortunate incidents from Maud’s past keep bubbling to the surface. Meanwhile, certain Problems in the present require immediate attention. Luckily, Maud is no stranger to taking matters into her own hands . . . even if it means she has to get a little blood on them in the process.
"Includes cookie recipes"
The Elderly Lady series sounds like a fun series.
Like, if you’ve read the Dexter books, you know that there was a courageous attempt at humor that didn’t really land. There’s a reason they removed so much of that nonsense for the TV series. It doesn’t work in a visual medium.
And like, nobody really wants a serial killer running around in real life. They’re just incredibly problematic people. In every regard.
But there’s something charming about reading dark humor serial killer books. There doesn’t need to be a load of drama. No police chases. No "I have to make a horrifyingly gory murder trap to kill a bunch of people so I can cover up all the murders I committed before" shenanigans.
Have you ever seen the 1996 movie "The Last Supper" starring Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner, and Courtney B. Vance as five graduate students sharing a house? Through a series of events, they begin killing people and burying their bodies in the backyard. Which results in some phenomenal tomatoes.
It’s like the "Death Note" without the Death Note and global access to the Internet. They swiftly go from killing people "that deserve it" to killing people that they feel even moderately judgmental about.
The setting is perfect. You couldn’t make that movie in a modern setting. It’s the lack of cellphones and the inability to tell anyone what’s happening that makes the movie.
If those events were being shown in a movie today, people would be wondering why some of those dinner guests weren’t letting people know that they’ve found themselves having dinner with weirdos. And at least one of them would have location services turned on.
Being set in 1996, people could completely disappear like that. You’d get in a car to travel across the country, and unless you stopped in every town and used the payphone to call someone and tell them where you were… They would just be like "So-and-so is supposed to show up on Thursday."
There was no way to contact someone because you wouldn’t know where they were.
So in "The Last Supper," all those people they disappeared could have fallen into a black hole for all anyone knew.
And that’s kind of how I feel about "An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed." From what I understand, it’s a collection of short stories about an elderly lady that uses peoples’ ageism to get away with her current murders. And in between, there’s recountings of some of the murders she committed throughout the years, starting at a relatively young age.
She got away with her crimes because she was doing them before the 2000s. And after that she was "just an old lady" that nobody let themselves suspect.
There are so many "famous" real life serial killers that never would have gotten away with their crimes for so long if they hadn’t lived in the past. Like, the story of one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s teenaged victims escaping mostly naked into the street only to be returned to him by THE POLICE is mindboggling. There’s no way that could happen now because someone would be reviewing the bodycam footage later and go "What the fuck was that?!?"
So I’m interested in reading a book series about an older person getting away with murder because of ageism. To have all suspicion be turned away by her claims of "Oops, had a senior moment."
~Harper Kingsley
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“The Last Supper” is on my watch list now. I’ve always had trouble getting normal size tomatoes to grow here, so now I know what to do with all the Jehovah’s Witnesses who knock on my door.