The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Quietly

 

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Quietly by Katarina Bivald (2026)  344 pages

Berit Gardner, a Swedish novelist who usually stays in England, has decided to spend the fall and winter in a cottage her grandparents had owned on an island off Sweden. She ends up inviting police detective Ian Ahmed, whom she met during the course of the first book in this series, The Murders in Great Diddling, to join her. He's off duty and a bit stir-crazy because of a broken leg. He spends his time with binoculars, obsessed with a large home built on a nearby island. The woman who owns it is Margrethe Cullberg-Frantzen, a wealthy, opinionated, and abrasive owner of art galleries in three countries. 

Berit and Ian are invited to celebrate her 80th birthday. The atmosphere is tense as Margrethe belittles her adult children. Later, she falls off a cliff to her death, and it's not clear whether it was an accident or murder. The Swedish police would call it an accident except that Margrethe had told Ian that she feared for her life.

The weeks pass by, and as it gets colder and more desolate (yet beautiful), pieces of information come to light that help Berit finally piece together the mystery. But the novel is more than a mystery as it delves deeper into Berit and Ian's friendship, Berit's background, and the physical world around them on this Swedish archipelago. Highly recommended.