An Elderly Lady is up to No Good

Maud is the protagonist of four of the five stories in the collection. She is in her late eighties, and although she has several markers of age—white hair and thin lips, for example—she is considerably stronger and clearer minded than others give her credit for. Maud illustrates The Mistake of Stereotyping the Elderly: She may pretend to need a cane or a walker and deliberately make her voice quaver or affect vague, disjointed thinking, but she only does so in order to manipulate others, using their preconceptions about older people to deflect suspicion away from herself.

Maud needs to deflect suspicion because she is a thief, a liar, and a cold-blooded killer. Although she is greatly concerned with propriety in others, looking down on overt displays of sexuality, flashy clothing, and loud behavior, she has no concern about her own, far more damaging behavior. Almost devoid of empathy for others, she is a cautionary example of The Impact of Self-Centered Thinking. She justifies the enormous damage she inflicts with excuses about a neighbor’s inconvenient noise, for example, or the theoretical threats others might present.

Although she is a dangerous killer, the collection’s dark sense of humor and Maud’s own backstory create a