”The first stage of grief is revenge” reads the header on this neat little thriller. Given that, the protagonist Blum is just the kind of wife her policeman husband needs when he is mown down by an unknown driver. Blum has serious form, having mercilessly dispatched her parents eight years earlier. Blum is tough and resourceful in the way of Lisbeth Salander from Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Handy also that she runs a funeral parlour and has unlimited access to coffins.
Woman of the Dead is a cool, slick little read, but emotionally uninvolving. You know from the start that Blum is utterly capable of doing what she sets out to do and destroying the evidence; that makes her success a rather foregone conclusion. Still, worth a read if you don’t mind some quite disturbing references to rape/imprisonment/murder/body disposal.
