Guest post written by The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die Quietly author Katarina Bivald
Katarina Bivald is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and #1 Indie Next Pick The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend and recipient of the 2025 Lillian Jackson Braun Memorial Award. She lives outside of Stockholm, Sweden. She grew up working part-time in a bookshop.
About The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die Quietly: From award winning, New York Times bestselling author Katarina Bivald comes The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die Quietly, a razor-sharp, atmospheric mystery that proves some women are far too formidable to go gently—even in death.
It’s difficult to imagine a more idyllic place than the archipelago of Stockholm in summertime. Sunshine glitters in the sea, red cottages with white corners dot the many small islands that make up the archipelago. Sea gulls, eiders, mallards, goldeneyes and swans populate the cliffs and the bays, and everywhere people are enjoying the long summer days when the sun almost never sets.
And then, of course, we have the winter.
Come autumn, the weather grows colder. The sea birds leave for warmer, more comfortable places. People do, too. The bays grow eerily quiet when even the sea gulls abandon them. On land, a lonely fox hunts for food.
And a lonely writer looks for places to kill someone.
For the first time in my life, I’ve chosen to write about a place that’s real, and incredibly dear to me. I’m here now to explore a new side of it.
Even though I’ve spent almost every summer of my life here, in the patchwork cottage first bought by my great grandparents and then added to over generations, everything feels very different during the autumn and winter.
As I row almost oil black waters thinking about murders, I note the boats securely on land, everything put away for the season. The cottages lay dark and abandoned. In a way, the islands feel reclaimed by nature. Undisturbed by us.
When winter arrives, I’m there too, as sleet and snow hammers the cottage and the fireplace struggles to warm the room. Darkness descends at three PM, and it’s a special kind of darkness when no one is around. No lights from other houses. I hunch by the fire, muttering to myself that it’s a special kind of stupid to be all alone in a cottage on a dark and stormy night and spend your time conjuring murderers. The only thing I see in windows is my own reflection, pale and ghostlike in the flickering light. At every sudden noise from outside I flinch and promise myself that next time, I’m writing a bloody romance. That takes place somewhere warm. In the summertime. When your mind is on murder, every snapped branch sounds very, very ominous.
But nothing prepares you for the quiet of the ice. Even the sounds of the ocean disappears, and all you see in every direction is a never-ending whiteness. When snow drifts across the ice it’s no longer possible to separate water from land.
Except it’s not quiet. Not really. Not if you listen closely. The ice moves and sings. I can sit for hours and listen to it. When the sun sets and the light turns almost purple, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
And deadly, in its own way. My thoughts turn to murder again, as they often do.
In The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die Quietly, Swedish-English author Berit Gardner decides to spend the autumn and winter in the cottage she’s inherited from her mother. When DCI Ian Ahmed of the Devon-Cornwall police very reluctantly accepts an invitation to convalesce there, he expects nothing more than bitter winds, silence, and boredom.
But just across the bay, a sleek, modern house stirs to life. Staff arrive in dark clothing, cleaning and prepping with military precision. And then Margrethe Cullenberg-Franzén appears—legend of the art world, notorious matriarch, and, as Ian soon learns, a woman used to bending the world to her will.
Here’s a piece of advice: if you’ve spent your entire life running your family as ruthlessly as you’ve run the family business, it is perhaps not the best idea to gather them all on a dark and stormy night to celebrate your eightieth birthday.
At the very least, it makes for a tense dinner party.
And at worst …
Well, you have to read to find out.
In this murder mystery, I wanted to explore how money and dysfunctional family ties led to disastrous decision-making from almost everyone, and how far one woman was willing to go to control her own legacy.
I wanted to create a sort of Nordic noir Agatha Christie – with a plot twist that no one sees coming, worthy even of that great Dame herself.
So I invite you to come with me to the cold and dark archipelago of Stockholm, and see for yourself if I succeeded.
Can you figure out who the killer is, before he – or she – strikes again?
