A well-structured plot which reinvents the standard genre on several levels. After the first incident there is blood and terror but then it's not quite what you imagine. The point of view is philosophically dark though not nearly as violent as many of her novels. It's as much about the criminal m...
A young couple out walking discover the body of a young boy and so begins a manhunt.The story is well developed and the characters are well drawn. The story proceeds at a good pace with good dialogue and a logical / believable storyline. I liked the fact that the viewpoints of the police, witness...
Karin Fossum may be listed as the Queen of crime fiction, but to me, she is the queen of the disconcerting ending. I mean, blow me away, Ms Karin. Blow. Me. Away. You did it again! Well, let me first digress.Ever since the outrageously popular series, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Scandinavian...
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Gunder Jomann thinks his life has been made complete when he returns from a trip to India a married man. But on the day his bride arrives in Norway she vanishes. Then the town is shocked by the news of an Indian woman found bludgeoned to death in a nearby meadow.Inspector Sejer and his colleague ...
Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off to buy sweets. A good-natured, happy girl, she is looking forward to her tenth birthday. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, Helga Joner, her mother, starts to worry. She phones the shop and various friends, but no one has seen he...
It was an alien feeling; she was never angry, only despondent. She’d fetched her handbag from the dining table, opened it and turned it upside down so that the money fluttered out. Most of it was in hundred-kroner notes, a few fifties and a clutch of thousands. She counted on and on, unable to be...
Instead he sat at his desk, staring at a blank piece of paper. By closing his eyes he could see the robber's face before him, almost like a photograph. The problem was trying to describe it to the man sitting across from him. Many other people had sat in the same place, sweating and struggling to...
They parked illegally outside a beauty salon and found the name Bjørk on the third floor of an apartment house. They rang the bell and waited. No answer. A woman came out of a door farther down the hall, clattering a trash can and a long-handled broom. "He went to the shop," she said. "Or at leas...
Morning. The summer heat continued, but a powerful thunderstorm was brewing, and heavy black clouds loomed in the sky. Sejer liked a good storm, the intense drama of nature, and he was sick and tired of the heat that had dominated the summer. It was stifling and made him heavy-headed. He longed f...
This time it was a teenage girl at the newsstand who was staring at him. To no avail, because he was preoccupied with other matters. Winther was right, of course. Zipp was hiding something. The certainty of this was as strong in him as his faith in God. What was it that Sejer had said? People alw...
It had been taken when Eddie was three, just before his father left them. Mass had refused to let him have it in the living room, and Eddie looked at it every night before he went to sleep. Only now it was morning. He sat up in bed and took the picture down. It had been taken on a warm day and th...
Charlo’s heart is pounding. He gets out the silverware and the gold watch and places it in a bag. The jewelry is worth very little and no one would give anything for it, so it remains in Julie’s gym bag at the bottom of the chest. He halts in front of the mirror and looks at the face he must now ...
Naturally, I stroked and humoured him as if he were a lost dog. I listened to all his stories, both those that showed him in a good light, and those that showed him in a less flattering one, as a parasite. The narrative about the curse of alcohol, which I wanted to understand, the cold and the lo...
He switched off the light. He curled up against the wall. He lay with a washcloth pressed against his cheek and at regular intervals he went to the bathroom to rinse it in cold water and wring it out. This relieved the pain for a few minutes. He moved the cloth around his face, across his cheeks ...
She's my challenge, this Lindys.' He assumes a dramatic mien. Contrary to all his good habits, he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his newly pressed trousers. I look up from my newspaper. I nod. 'It certainly looks that way,' I say. 'Are you disappointed?' He pulls his hands out of his pocket...
In the frayed chair, with his legs on the footstool. He slept soundlessly and with an open mouth. A few worn teeth were visible in his pale gums. Johnny sat down. Proud of what he’d done, he sincerely believed he was remarkable. Not that he thought he was worth much – no more than a louse, or a c...
It was situated on a hilltop above Loch Bonna and those pupils whose classrooms faced north often daydreamed as they watched the blue water. Alex Meyer led Sejer and Skarre to Edwin's classroom. The room stirred mixed feelings in them, it had to do with the way it smelled, an indeterminate mix of...