Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones is an unusual murder mystery that takes place in modern-day Poland. Janina Duszejko lives in one of seven houses on a snow-covered plateau bordering the Czech Republic.

Janina, the 60-something main character, is a hard-core astrologist who calculates horoscopes. Many of the truths she believes are centered around astrology. She strongly feels that most names don’t match the person, so she refers to those around her by their defining characteristics, such as Big Foot, Oddball, and Good News.

Late one evening her closest neighbor, Oddball, asks her to accompany him to Big Foot’s house. Big Foot, their widely disliked neighbor, is dead, the cause unknown. I read with horror as they proceeded to “tidy” the body, cleaning him up and dressing him before the police came. Thus begins a chain of mysterious deaths in the small village.

Janina hates the hypocrisy of traditional religion, the superiority of humans and what they regard as their right to exploit other species. She’s greatly disturbed with the injustice of hunting for sport and questions why the killing of a human is thought of as “murder,” but the killing of a deer is regarded as “sport.”

As we watch the body-count rise, the pattern of these deaths becomes clear. Janina writes long, involved letters to the authorities with her theories, but they pay her no attention.

I enjoyed seeing the world through Janina’s eyes. She is an extremely intelligent woman, but eccentric. Janina appealed to me in a quirky way. It’s good to remember that we don’t all hold the same values, nor see situations the same way. People who like unconventional mysteries, and especially those who are interested in astrology, will enjoy this thought-provoking story.