Murder Mindfully

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Exploring Reader! The October pick is Murder Mindfully by Karsten Dusse. I do believe that a horror novel is more appropriate for the spooky season ahead, but I just cannot handle that genre. So…I’m reviewing a dark comedy novel instead.

It’s not quite a murder mystery because we know early on that Björn kills his boss/client named Dragan and seeks to keep up the illusion that Dragan is alive in order for Björn to protect his inner peace. This novel came out originally in German in 2019 and the author has since published 4 other novels.

I really liked the first two books (the only ones having been translated to English). The title of Murder Mindfully caught my attention because of the opposite meanings of each word. When you think of murder, you think of violence and when you think of mindfulness, you think of peace. However, murder is death and the finality of death can bring a sense of peace. It was really fun to read how Björn dealt with the aftermath of killing his client, an important mob boss. There was a lot of action and things seemed to go bad every time Björn found a solution. I think the author did a great job of also not making this seem dragged on. If you’ve read last August’s review on A Man Called Ove, it has the same humoristic vibe. It’s also funny because for most of the novel, Björn is going against himself. By that I mean that he is fighting and solving problems that he created.

The style of the novel is also fun and structured. Each chapter starts with a lesson on mindfulness that Björn picked up from his mindfulness coach. And then that chapter’s events are related to that lesson. I also like the author’s writing style. It’s smooth, easy to read, and written in the 3rd person POV. The narrator is telling us Björn story which elevates the vocabulary and story telling. I like this separation between the reader and the characters because we don’t feel complicit in Björn’s actions. Through the narrator, we are looking from afar, but not associating with him as much as a 1st person POV would have done.

However, murder is death and the finality of death can bring a sense of peace.

Now, what can I say about the characters? Björn’s profession as a lawyer makes him efficient and logical. He does not take pleasure in killing people, but rather sees murder as a solution to permanently remove stress factors from his life. Dragan, the mob boss, is quite the opposite of Björn. He is inherently violent, impulsive, emotional, and short-sighted. Although you could argue that Björn is short-sighted by killing his boss and other people who start inconveniencing him. Next on the list is Joschka Breitner, the mindfulness therapist. While he doesn’t serve as a physically reoccurring character, he is quite central and uniformly present in Björn’s life. He is a constant influence on his thoughts and actions through the mindfulness book he gave Björn. The last important character I want to mention is Katharina, Björn’s wife. She’s the one who forces Björn to go see a therapist in order to help with his work-life balance. I think it was unfair of her to ask him to ditch his most profitable client or else she’d divorce him and remove him from their daughter’s life. I believe she could have done a better effort of finding a middle ground because she unintentionally started the killing spiral Björn fell down in.

Murder Mindfully is a great, light, and funny read. You can also complement your reading experience with the TV show of the same name. I haven’t gotten around to watching it, but from the episode descriptions, the plot looks very similar to the book. I’m not a big fan of Halloween, but for all those that are, I wish you a wonderful spooky season!

Until next time, keep exploring those pages!