murder mystery

If you like murder mysteries, this is a book for you. I do not normally read them, found the blurb intriguing and started it. Once I started, I did want to know what happened. I learned a lot about New Zealand, the diversity of wealthy people who live there, and the lush climate in some places. A wealthy South Indian woman suddenly disappears along with 250,000 in cash. Ten years later no one still knows what happened to her and then suddenly someone finds her Jaguar hidden in dense woods with her skeleton in it. Her devoted son has believed all this time she ran away from a horrible marriage (he cannot stand his mean dad) and is still alive. Now the son is a famous, wealthy writer and determined to find out who killed her. This is the story of her life, a horrible marriage, a wealthy neighborhood where nothing seems as it really is, and the son’s quest to find who killed his mother.

Even though I try to keep up-to-date on Nobel Prize authors, I was unfamiliar with this one until I saw this book on a table at Barnes and Noble. First, the title intrigued me; then the blurb added more mystery. I bought it–so glad I did. Once I started, there was no stopping–fascinated.

Written in first person, it is contains the thoughts and experiences as related by an older woman. Once a bridge engineer, she now resides in the Polish countryside near the Czech border. Winters are harsh; most of the people who live there live there only in summer. She stays and cares for the houses of the summer people while they are gone all winter. She also teaches English part-time to children at the local school. Her passions are animals and astrology. Even though a science type, she is totally convinced that astrology contains life’s secrets even to the point of predicting the time and events of a person’s death. The book is also a murder mystery with an ending totally different from what I expected.

Now I am going to purchase the author’s book, Flights, which won the Mann Booker prize in 2018.