Woman of the Dead

An excellent thriller, with a highly unusual heroine and a satisfyingly gripping plot..

This was one intense story! At times I had to put it down for a while. A wonderful twisty, twisted plot. I am still ambiguous about the leading character, Blum, whether she is to be lauded or condemned.

Thrilling, engaging, and so damn absorbing. This book was hard to put down!

A special thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

WOMAN OF THE DEAD by Berhnard Aichner is one edgy, wacky, evil, tense, wicked, suspenseful, and thoroughly creepy mystery crime psycho-thriller. "Female Vigilante Justice, at its finest!"

Meet Brünhilde Blum, a 24-year-old undertaker in Innsbruck. A beautiful mortician married to the love of her life, a cop, Mark. They met on boat out at sea, while her creepy adopted parents drowned. With a dark past, she never thought she could be so happy, with two beautiful girls and a loving husband. Mark’s elderly dad, a former cop, moves in with them, and completes their happy home at the Villa.

Blum’s idyllic life is destroyed when her husband is run down and murdered by a hit-and-run driver in front of their house. Being a cop, Mark is always involved in danger, and loves the thrill of his fast motorcycle. Blum is devastated, and everything she loves has been taken away. How can she go on? She vows she will find his killer, even though the cops do not have any leads---She will find the killer and the man who ran her husband down. She wants justice. She has to remain strong for her children.

After his death she comes across some conversations on his phone; a ring of sadistic evil, slavery, torture, abuse; immigrants, a woman, victims--and her husband Mark was trying to help, gathering information and got too close. There are five powerful men and she will track them down and kill them one by one. She will do it for her children, her husband, and the victims.

Fearless, Blum will use her business, (she is unafraid of the dead), her loyal employee (Reza, with a past), and all her resources as a mortician to take out this ring of evil and abuse. With a ready coffin and a hearse at her fingertips, she is a scary power house! Driven by a dark past, and a powerful need for retaliation, love, and grief –however, who can she trust? How far will she go?

A labyrinth of creepy twists and grotesque turns--assured to offer readers graphic nightmares and sleepless nights; an undertaker, a hearse, crematorium, coffins, bloody corpses, dismemberment, saws, body parts; masked men--a clown, a priest, a cook, a photographer, and an strong obsession for REVENGE. This taunt, heart-pounding fast-paced page-turner thriller, will leave you breathless—anxiously awaiting the next installment with this terrifying new trilogy.

Engrossing and explicit, --- one of those books you cannot put down, as you peak around the corner; not for the faint-hearted! In the theme of Jennifer Hillier (The Butcher), Paul Cleave, Karin Slaughter, Mark Edwards, Lisa Gardner, Laura Lippman, Lisa Unger, Gillian Flynn, and Stephen King --sexy hot Austrian Aichner will wow you with danger and violence, with his intriguing female protagonist who will stop at nothing for retaliation. Can’t wait to see what comes next!

For those who enjoy vigilante movies such as Gran Torino, Dexter, Death Wish, The Equalizer, Falling Down, and Death Sentence, will devour.

WOMAN OF THE DEAD is the first book of a crime trilogy by award-winning Austrian author Bernhard Aichner, as well as his first novel to be translated into English. Welcome to the US!

"Woman of the Dead is both a thriller and a love story. Blum, like Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter, is a serial killer, a character who does terrible things, but the novel wouldn’t work if you didn’t sympathize with her and feel her pain. " (Enjoyed reading the inspiration behind the book from the author: Yes, indeed it works-nice research)!

Brünhilde Blum prefers to go by just Blum. She loathes the name given her by her adoptive parents, just as she loathes those same parents. They owned a mortuary and her father trained her at a very, very young age to process the dead. Needless to say, Blum has a very practical, albeit skewed, view of death. In this way “Woman of the Dead” by Austrian author Bernhard Aichner is like no other, although there are homages paid to Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter and Steig Larsen’s Lisbeth Salander.

At the heart of the story is how the losses Blum experiences affect her view of the world. Instead of drawing inward, although she does do that for a time, she reaches out to help someone even more troubled than she. With her family’s love and support — and virtual ignorance of the real situation — Blum attempts to bring some evil men to justice.

Aichner’s pacing is very different and off-kilter in a fascinating way. The violent acts and deaths are portrayed rather vividly. Blum is a provocative character. Her thought processes and resulting actions are impulsive and calculating at the same time. “Woman of the Dead” is an exemplary thriller.

A dark and disturbing tale of vengeance and violence, Woman of the Dead is the first novel by Bernhard Aichner to feature Blum, mother, mortician and murderer.

When Blum's beloved husband is killed in a hit and run she is nearly destroyed until she learns that he was deliberately targeted. The photographer, the cook, the priest, the huntsman, and the clown - these are the men responsible, and Blum is going to make them pay.

Woman Of the Dead has one of the most memorable character introductions I've ever read. The story opens with a during a defining moment in Blum's life before leaping forward eight years to place us in the present. Blum is the devoted wife of Mark, a police detective, the doting mother of their two young daughters, and the owner of a successful funeral business. She is both hero and anti-hero in this story, grieving widow and ruthless killer.

There is raw and visceral emotion in The Woman of the Dead. The pain and numbness of Blum's grief and the horror of the abuse Danya experienced at the hands of the mysterious cabal. There is also grisly and often explicit violence, this isn't a story for the squeamish.

The plot is quite straight forward, perhaps stretched a little thin at times. It's a fast paced story that builds suspense, though astute readers shouldn't have any problems guessing the identity of the last man standing.

Woman of the Dead is an unusual story, with a rather extraordinary protagonist. I'm curious to see how the series develops.