In Woman of the Dead, the first in a planned trilogy of crime thrillers, Austrian author Bernhard Aichner introduces readers to Brünhilde Blum--aka "Blum"--the steely, 24-year-old adopted daughter of monstrous, unloving and now elderly parents who run a successful funeral home in Innsbruck. Blum, forced to "lay out the dead since she was seven," uses a family boating trip to settle old scores and liberate herself in a chilling, opening scene that establishes the psychological make-up of Aichner's female antihero.
Evil lurks and follows Blum, even eight years later, after she takes over the mortuary, marries Mark, a dedicated police officer, and gives birth to two beautiful children. When Mark dies in a hit-and-run accident, which later appears to have been murder, Blum, in an effort to transcend her grief, begins her own investigation. She discovers recorded interrogation sessions Mark had with a woman who recounts a graphic scenario where she and two other female immigrants were held captive and repeatedly tortured and raped by five depraved and powerful men with shrouded identities. Blum suspects this case--and those involved--may have contributed to Mark's death and sets off to find the answers that eluded her husband. Via her mortuary background, Blum, a fascinating study in dissociative contradiction, delivers a distinctive brand of vigilante justice.
Aichner has written a vivid, terrifying story. His sparse writing style is fleshed out by provocatively violent scenes, which will draw readers into a grisly, complex web of one woman on a quest for vengeance. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines