Jasmin Schimmerhof is a middle-aged woman who lives in a small apartment on the ground floor of Maud’s building. She is murdered by Maud in the collection’s first story, “An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems.” The ease with which Maud deceives Jasmin about her murderous intentions is the text’s first example of The Mistake of Stereotyping the Elderly. Her characterization also helps to support the text’s concern with The Ambiguity Between Justice and Vengeance: To Maud, Jasmin is a clear antagonist who is scheming to take over Maud’s apartment, and the text’s depiction of Jasmin is heavily filtered through Maud’s fears and resentment. This portrait of Jasmin implies that killing her may not be unambiguously evil.

After a childhood marked by her wealthy parents’ emotional neglect, Jasmin married and divorced twice, wrote a tell-all book about her childhood home, lost her mother in a car accident, and ended up in a drug and alcohol treatment facility. Now, she is trying to launch a career in visual art. Maud judges Jasmin’s life history to be tawdry and sees her art as crude and shoddy, as it seems to her to focus on shock value and shallow ideas rather than on technique and thoughtful communication. This interpretation is bolstered by descriptions of Jasmin’s paintings and sculptures, which feature seemingly random assemblages of things like tampons, bone fragments, and rubber phalluses and have self-consciously artsy names like “No Title I” (10).

Maud notices Jasmin’s chipped nail polish and the way her clothing and feet are dirtied from working in her studio, contributing to the portrait of Jasmin as a sloppy and self-involved person who does not much value others’ opinions. Maud sees Jasmin as “spoiled” by her wealth and privilege and resents the sense of entitlement that allows Jasmin to bulldoze her way into Maud’s life (28). Maud does not see the gourmet treats that Jasmin brings her as evidence of generosity; rather, she sees an attempt at manipulation. She does not see Jasmin’s curiosity about and effusive praise of Maud’s apartment as neighborly or warm; instead, she sees unethical scheming. To Maud, Jasmin embodies The Impact of Self-Centered Thinking and little else.

Because Jasmin’s perspective is not offered, it is impossible to know for sure if Maud’s beliefs about her character and intentions are accurate. Jasmin does get to “speak” for herself in the blog entries that Maud reads, however, and these entries suggest that there is merit to Maud’s ideas of her general character. In her blog, Jasmin offers shallow platitudes and self-congratulation, and her frequent use of capital letters and multiple exclamation marks conveys a breathless, self-aggrandizing tone. In one entry, Jasmin seems to confirm Maud’s suspicions about her scheme to take over the apartment, as she shares that soon she may “be moving into a bigger apartment! […] BIGGER! MUCH BIGGER!!!” (26).

Charlotte is Maud’s older sister. In the collection’s first story, the reader learns that Charlotte has been dead for forty years and that, before her death, she lived with Maud in the Gothenburg apartment. Gradually, more information about Charlotte is revealed and it becomes clear that Maud’s experiences with Charlotte are central to her current behavior. The gradual revelation of how Charlotte lived and died creates a unifying focus for the entire collection.

In “An Elderly Lady on Her Travels,” the collection’s second story, it is revealed that Charlotte was unwell and did not work, and the responsibility for her care fell entirely on Maud’s shoulders. Charlotte was, from Maud’s perspective, a hypochondriac, plagued by irrational fears. She refused to leave the apartment and reacted with terror when Maud suggested taking in boarders in order to make ends meet. Charlotte often took more of her medications than prescribed and spent a lot of time sleeping. These details show how difficult Charlotte was to live with and characterize Maud as dutiful and self-sacrificing. This creates sympathy for Maud and adds to the book’s exploration of The Ambiguity Between Justice and Vengeance.

In the following story, “An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime,” more details emerge. Charlotte, 11 years Maud’s senior, was hostile to Maud during their childhoods but entirely dependent on Maud as an adult. Charlotte insisted on Maud being home every night, making it impossible for Maud to have a social life, travel, and so on. Charlotte refused to go into a residential care facility as her doctor suggested. These details suggest that Charlotte—either because of her personality or her illness—was entirely focused on her own needs, creating misery for Maud. This helps to develop the collection’s thematic emphasis on The Impact of Self-Centered Thinking.

Because Charlotte was such a source of misery to her dutiful sister, the possibility that the fall down the stairs that ended her life was not fully accidental—that Maud may in fact have pushed Charlotte to her death—is more understandable. In the narrative present, Maud feels that her life only really began after Charlotte’s death. Absent the burden of Charlotte, Maud is able to live more fully. If, indeed, she is responsible for Charlotte’s death, these revelations in the collection’s third story shed new light on the origins of Maud’s career as someone willing to kill those who stand in the way of her living life on her own terms.

Zazza Henrix is an actress in her fifties who becomes engaged to Maud’s former love interest, Gustaf Adelsiöö, when Gustaf is 90 years old. Maud kills Zazza in the collection’s second story, “An Elderly Lady on Her Travels,” because she is sure that Zazza is a terrible person who is trying to take advantage of the wealthy Gustaf.

Zazza was born Siv Hansson, and she was once Maud’s student, many years previously. Maud disliked her even then, because she skipped class, smoked, and had a bad attitude. After leaving school, “Siv” became “Zazza,” a largely unsuccessful actress in the adult film industry. Maud’s impressions of the adult Zazza support her previous conclusions. She notes Zazza’s bleached hair, cosmetic surgeries, and low-cut dress and sees someone distastefully preoccupied with sex appeal. She observes that Zazza is drinking heavily and laughing loudly and sees someone uninterested in public decorum. When she overhears Zazza make a nasty comment about Gustaf’s daughter, she considers it evidence of Zazza’s callous disregard for the feelings of someone she is supposed to love.

Zazza is not able to speak for herself in this story, and there is no clear evidence that Maud’s perceptions are reality. Zazza is louder, more brash, more sexual, and less sensitive than Maud would like—but her intentions toward Gustaf are never made explicit. She is another morally ambiguous victim and an example of The Impact of Self-Centered Thinking—on both her part and Maud’s.

The wealthy, middle-aged neighbor whom Maud kills in “An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime” is identified only by his profession. He is called “the attorney” throughout the story. Given her isolation, it is unlikely that Maud actually knows his name, and so this choice preserves the limited perspective of the third-person narrator.

The high-powered attorney and his wife move into the apartment above Maud’s in the fall of her eighty-sixth year. It is clear that he is a self-centered and arrogant person, as he immediately kicks up a fuss about having to get on a waiting list for parking like all of the building’s other residents. He is also a heavy drinker and extremely violent toward his wife. Despite how awful the man is, he gets away with his behavior because he can also be quite persuasive and charming, as he is when the ambulance comes to get his battered wife and he passes her injuries off as the result of a fall. The attorney is an antagonist for Maud because of the noise his abuse of his wife creates, and Maud murders him by shoving him down the stairs of their apartment building. Both his behavior and Maud’s reaction to it demonstrate The Impact of Self-Centered Thinking.

Richard W. Bergh is the narrator and protagonist of “The Antique Dealer’s Death.” He is an elderly retired journalist living in Maud’s apartment building who involves himself in the investigation of the death of Herr Frazzén. Richard is portrayed as somewhat impulsive—he marries Mary and moves into her home in Gothenburg just six months after first meeting her on the streets of Stockholm, and he inserts himself into the police investigation of the antique dealer’s death without a second thought.

His desire to be involved in the investigation is driven by his self-aggrandizing nature: although he has no investigative experience, he believes that his long-ago career as a newspaper’s arts critic—along with a few crime novels he once wrote—qualify him to assist. When the police seem unimpressed with his supposed credentials, he drops the name of a friend, a Stockholm police inspector that he claims to have assisted with investigations. When Richard is finally allowed in to view the body, however, his reactions reveal that he is not as used to viewing the dead as he has implied. Richard is also portrayed as somewhat sexist. He comments on a young female officer’s beautiful hair and the color of her eyes, he is surprised that a tall officer turns out to be a woman, and he is shocked to discover that this female officer is an inspector. These details help to create an amusing portrait of a pompous busybody and lower expectations about what he will be able to contribute to the investigation.

Ironically, however, Richard is one of the few people involved in the investigation who suspects Maud. This demonstrates that he is intelligent and perceptive and shows that—despite his mild sexism—he is less prone to be swayed by stereotypes about elderly women than others are. His age is a significant factor in his ability to see past these stereotypes: As an elderly person himself, he is aware that not all older people are helpless and confused.