“The Antique Dealer’s Death” is the collection’s most genre-typical story. Its protagonist and narrator, Richard, is an innocent bystander drawn into a murder investigation by happenstance, which is typical of domestic mysteries. The events in this story are more genuinely “mysterious” than the murders in the collection, and the story is structured in a pattern familiar to most mystery readers: A body is discovered, and then people work to uncover the killer. This differs from the atypical structure of the other stories, in which Maud encounters difficulties and solves them through a murder committed on-page, with the audience’s full knowledge. Most of the stories are not “whodunnits”—their conflicts are more about how the killer will strike than who the killer is. Richard’s story is a whodunnit—although it is clear based on patterns of evasion and misusing ableist beliefs that the killer is most likely Maud, creating dramatic irony. This shift in form also helps reinvigorate the narrative arc of the collection, delaying reader fatigue by reintroducing a question with genuine suspense, even if it’s ultimately ironic.

Richard’s characterization is another source of the story’s humor. Like other characters in the collection, he is somewhat self-centered, but unlike people like Jasmin, Zazza, and the attorney, he poses no threat, besides suspecting Maud. His attempts to insert himself into the investigation by claiming that he has experience and dropping the name of a long-retired Stockholm police inspector characterize him as nosy and pompous, particularly when juxtaposed against his actual reactions to the crime scene, where he becomes so overwhelmed that he has to be physically supported on his way out of the room. He is steeped in outdated gender expectations and seems to represent a traditional, hierarchical form of masculinity—tapping a female officer on the shoulder to get her attention when she is busy working, taking note of an officer’s “thick braid” of a “rich, deep red color” that he finds “strikingly beautiful” and being visibly startled by the fact that a female officer might have the rank of inspector (102). 

This inspector, Detective Inspector Irene Huss, is incidentally the protagonist of one of Tursten’s long-running and more typically serious series, and her cameo here is a metafictional element, but more importantly, it foreshadows that women, rather than the men around Maud, will be the ones to see through her. This creates an interesting parallel to Richard’s growing suspicions and sets up a thematic pattern in which female investigators are portrayed as more perceptive and less easily deceived by age or gendered assumptions. That it is Richard—a stereotypically masculine and elderly man—who ultimately suspects Maud suggests that even those most likely to share her societal invisibility can become attuned to the distortions it hides, deepening the story’s meditation on The Mistake of Stereotyping the Elderly. Richard’s disbelief that women could hold high ranks within the police force mirrors the final story’s depiction of male officers who cannot believe the women detectives are correct—or that an elderly woman could be a serial killer—highlighting how stereotyping creates blind spots that ultimately disserve everyone.

Richard’s revulsion at the crime scene, although a part of the story’s morbid humor, is also an illustration of how a psychologically typical person reacts to violent death. Seeing the aftermath of one of Maud’s crimes through his eyes adds a layer of complexity to the collection’s examination of The Ambiguity Between Justice and Vengeance. His emotional narration contrasts sharply with the almost clinical tone of the other stories in the collection, highlighting how unusual Maud’s psychology really is. By momentarily removing Maud’s filter and letting readers experience the aftermath of her violence through an outsider’s horror, the story heightens awareness of just how desensitized readers have become to her behavior. The inclusion of a story with a first-person narrator like Richard also points out how horrific Maud’s actions are in a way that is not possible for a limited third-person narrator bound to Maud’s own perspective, as Maud finds her own brand of vigilante justice to be natural and fair. This is reinforced by Nils’s later appraisal of Maud as “cold-blooded” (121) and Richard’s shudder as he passes Maud at the end of the story and thinks, “That woman is lethal” (123). This final moment—Richard’s visceral physical response—offers readers a cue to reevaluate Maud through a more morally grounded lens, presenting her as the calculated and sometimes obvious killer that she is.

Richard characterizes Maud as “reserved” and speculates that she keeps to herself because of the other residents’ hostility about her essentially free apartment (105). Having someone other than Maud comment on the tension in the building may retrospectively validate Maud’s concerns about Jasmin’s ambitions in “An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems.” Richard’s descriptions of Maud also support the text’s exploration of The Mistake of Stereotyping the Elderly. Despite being an elderly person himself, Richard initially thinks of Maud as “the old lady,” seeing her more as part of an age-based category of human beings rather than an individual person (102). His descriptions of how confused and distressed Maud seems and how much care the officers are taking to comfort and accommodate her support the other stories’ descriptions of her manipulations. This also reflects one of the collection’s darker ironies: Institutional protections meant to support the vulnerable can, in rare cases, be exploited by someone who knows how to perform vulnerability convincingly.

Richard’s own questionable competence as an observer and investigator makes it doubly ironic that he is the first character in the series of stories to suspect Maud. Richard and Nils’s conclusion that “It was the old lady who did it” would be startling if the story were intended as a stand-alone, as it is not foreshadowed by any skill on Richard’s part or by any overtly suspicious behavior on Maud’s part (120). As part of the fourth story in a collection in which Maud has already killed three people, however, Richard and Nils’s deduction is not intended as a moment of revelation and surprise—it is intended to create a new kind of tension. It also slyly critiques the often belated nature of justice and shows how obvious truths can go unrecognized until it is almost too late to matter.

Up until this point, there has been no question of Maud getting caught. Now, readers must confront their own reactions to Maud and her actions and consider if this is a moment of relief because Maud might be found out or a moment of fear for a character readers have become attached to. Telling this part of Maud’s story from Richard’s perspective increases the tension. Placing Maud into seeming jeopardy inside the only story that is not bound by her perspective means that there is no access to what she is thinking and experiencing, and, at least for now, there is no resolution to this tension. By fracturing the narrative point of view in this story, Tursten effectively destabilizes the reader’s potential emotional allegiance to Maud, paving the way for a more ambiguous finale.

The final story in the collection, “An Elderly Lady Takes a Trip to Africa,” quietly confirms Maud’s guilt in the antique dealer’s death by revealing the story’s true timeline. This retrospective placement reveals that the “trip” Maud took to escape suspicion was not, as it initially seemed, a leisurely vacation, but a calculated disappearance designed to avoid arrest. This detail retroactively shifts the tension in Richard’s story: The open-ended ambiguity about whether Maud will be caught is not resolved by confrontation or investigation but by Maud’s own preemptive maneuvering. It also adds a layer of complexity to Richard’s suspicions, validating his instincts while also highlighting the systemic failures that allow Maud to continue evading justice. In this way, the collection rewards close reading and complicates the reader’s emotional response to Maud: Even if she is clever and resourceful, she is no longer the scrappy underdog. She is a skilled manipulator who, by the end of the book, has not only evaded legal consequences but also done so with ease. This connection between the two stories underscores the collection’s recurring themes of The Ambiguity Between Justice and Vengeance, The Impact of Self-Centered Thinking, and The Mistake of Stereotyping the Elderly—especially when age and gender are used as camouflage.