Fifty-something policewoman Bella Block is assigned to check out two apparent suicides in a small, impoverished village where she happens to have a summerhouse but usually leads an isolated "don't-bother-me-I'm-on-vacation" existence. Tasked with finding out if there's anything to the rumours of foul play regarding the two deaths, she pays more attention to the locals and realises soon enough that something is indeed amiss. Someone enters her house (in the village nobody bothers with locking the doors) and draws a pig on her tabletop. A cat is killed and left at her doorstep. And the swinish innkeeper, Block's main contact as the only purveyor of grub and information, seems to be dying of fear. The approaching summer fête looms ominously on the horizon as the time of the last act of a revenge.

As "mysteries" go I'm not sure how satisfying this one may be to the fans of the genre. The crime that is being avenged is described in the beginning, we know before Block does what is going on, and we even know what is going to happen, since the perpetrator's POV is included in a few short chapters. But we don't find out who this is until the last and most characters aren't even named.

What I enjoyed the most is Block's character herself, her unapologetic independence, her "sick-to-deathness" with men and their shit (note, she still likes to get them in bed--on her terms), her solidarity with women, her uncommon-for-heroines age, physique and appreciation of it (how often does one read of a woman who calls herself "fat"--with pleasure? Looks in a mirror at her pudgy belly, liking it?) The notion that she's the (illegitimate) granddaughter of the Russian poet Aleksandr Blok is also charmingly out-there and provides occasion for much quoting of poetry.

Go Gercke! ( )

Supposedly crime fiction, but the crime is solved without evidence as to how the female detective actually found out who did it. She is self-confident, unafraid, full of herself and brash. Egocentric feminist loud mouth with a view of others as below her. Nothing great.