This is the complete review as it appears at my blog dedicated to reading, writing (no 'rithmatic!), movies, & TV. Blog reviews often contain links which are not reproduced here, nor will updates or modifications to the blog review be replicated here. Graphic and children's reviews on the blog typically feature two or three images from the book's interior, which are not reproduced here.Note that I don't really do stars. To me a book is either worth reading or it isn't. I can't rate it three-fifths worth reading! The only reason I've relented and started putting stars up there is to credit the good ones, which were being unfairly uncredited. So, all you'll ever see from me is a five-star or a one-star (since no stars isn't a rating, unfortunately).I rated this book WARTY!WARNING! MAY CONTAIN UNHIDDEN SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!I don’t really have polite enough words to describe how god-awful this novel was. I've read Scandinavian works of this nature before and enjoyed them, so I thought this might be interesting too, but it was just the opposite. I managed to finish the book, because the writing itself wasn't technically bad (although this was a translation, I can’t speak for the original), but in terms of plot and execution, it was without a doubt the most insipid, ponderous, uninspiring, tedious, frustrating, meandering, clueless, vapid, dissipated so-called 'mystery' I've ever read.I know full-well that in the US we’re overdosed on the formulaic and the shallow, and on the template-driven must-be-tidily-wrapped-in-forty-minutes crime stories from TV. I know the books aren’t that much better, but even when pushing that aside and adopting a more cosmopolitan approach to crime stories, this novel still stands out as being completely lackluster, and so bad it was squirm-inducing. Do police in Norway never ever do any forensic work? Do they never follow clues? Are they really more interested in talking about their sick dog with the prime murder suspect than ever they are in discussing the actual crime? I sincerely hope not.We're told that the woman was attacked and ran and was finally brought down. We find a suspect with scratch marks on his face, yet never once is the question of whether the victim has skin under her fingernails raised. It’s apparently something which the forensic people failed to check. Seriously? I've never been to Norway, but my instinct is that their police and crime work is very much like it is in the US and any other modernized country, yet if we’re to trust this author's writing, Norway is no better than any severely underprivileged and under-funded third world country for how technologically backward it is! Frankly I don’t believe that.Do suspects routinely submit themselves to endless hours of questioning without ever having their lawyer anywhere near? The main suspect's lawyer is in this novel for about one page and that's it. We never see or hear from him again! He is never once present when the suspect is questioned. The suspect offers all kinds of support for his assertion that he did not do it, and the police fail to follow-up on any of it. One of his items of supportive evidence is actually proven to favor him - but totally by accident, and it never gets raised again. Is this how criminals are brought to book in Norway - pick someone who seems a likely suspect and interrogate him endlessly without a lawyer until he breaks down and confesses - and then blindly assume that this proves that this guy did it?I sincerely hope that Norwegian police are not as hopeless, clueless, mindless, and useless as Inspector Sejer and his assistant are. The assistant attracts the stalker-ish attention of one of the primary witnesses, who is a young girl, yet when she calls him to tell him she thought there was a man in her yard watching her, he tells her he's off-duty and can’t help her, and he turns over and goes to sleep. Later she's attacked, evidently by this same man. She calls this assistant and he tells her to call her mother! I kid you not. That's his response when a citizen tells him she was attacked; then he turns over and goes to sleep. What happened to her is never resolved or explained. It’s never even followed up. It’s just let go.There isn't a single person in the entire town who steps forward and openly volunteers information. Everyone holds back and fails to report important things until they're outed by someone else, or until they finally break down and 'fess up what they know. There's no explanation at all given for any of this behavior. I guess we're just supposed to assume that Norwegians love to let major crimes happen and the perps get away with it! One guy - and for no reason at all - disposes of evidence in a lake. It’s just not realistic that every single person would be like that. There are half-a dozen suspects, yet not one of them is properly investigated. Does Fossum really want us to believe her country is like this? Her people are like this?Inspector Sejer is the most misnamed character ever, since he inspects nothing! Usually the inspector in a story like this is someone who has something going for him: he's really good at seeing through the trees to the forest (or vice-versa!), or he's is acutely observant, or he's brilliantly deductive, or he's great at getting people to expose their own guilt. Sejer is none of these things. Sejer needs to be retired.In the old TV series Columbo, Peter Falk played a rather rambling, bumbling detective, but underneath that you knew he was sly and calculating, and brilliant at getting people to admit things they really wanted to conceal. Sejer is just like Columbo, but without any of Columbo's positive traits or results! Instead, he really is slow, dull, bumbling, hesitant, un-stimulating, uninventive, unadventurous; a plodding chunk of sheer boredom. He shows no brilliance in anything. Finally he decides, for no good reason at all, that it’s this one particular guy, who has no solid evidence against him, and that guy's arrested and charged without further ado or investigation. We never actually learn if he really did it. This is a first for me in a murder mystery!The writer is supposedly the Queen of Crime in her home nation, and I can subscribe to that if the crime is lousy plotting and atrocious execution, but if the title is intended as a positive one, meaning that she's the best, then the rest of the Norwegian crime fiction writers must be a sorry lot indeed. I weep for them, but I honestly don't believe that the writer of this novel is the queen of anything but cluelessness.This book is one of several in the Sejer series. How this lousy approach to writing a detective series ever progressed that far is the only real mystery here.
This book was an easy read, with many interesting characters, a good flow, moments of mystery and moments of suspense. I thoroughly enjoyed picking the book up every night, hoping to find out more and to try and guess who the murderer was. However, the ending disappointed me.I usually judge a book by the ending. If it is a good ending, I will say the whole book was good even if it started out less well. In this case, the book was great, but the mediocre ending ruined it for me. The problem was, it was too ambiguous. There were many suspects, and we never found out who truly did it and what was their motive. Hours after I finished reading the book, it's still on my mind as I try to recount past details and to figure out who the murderer was. I guess this lasting feeling was the author's goal, but it does not please me. I love reading a mystery and then a perfect conclusion, and feeling all the puzzle pieces come together, leaving you with a feeling of amazement. This was not the case. All that I was left with was a feeling of emptiness and confusion.Here are some parts of the story which I felt were left uncomplete: (SPOILERS!!)Linda - She started out as a rather ordinary character, but by the end of the book, she had became quite a psychopath, with an unhealthly obsession with Jacob Skarre. We never know what happened with her - did she kill Jacob, as she was planning? Was she telling the truth about the car she saw? Was she telling the truth about the time she got attacked by a man? If so, who was this man that attacked her at night? Mode - Was he the muderer? Many clues point towards it. he drives a white Saab, which Gunder saw speeding away after the muder. The fact that he had a bowling ball was emphasized - it would make the perfect murder weapon. And he truly had no alibi, since he left the bowling alley before the murder occured. All clues point towards him, yet this character received little attention during the book, and I have no clue what his motive would be.Poona - Why did she leave her suitcase in the cafe? And was Einar telling the truth? The book emphasized that the suitcase is very big - surely you cannot simply 'forget' something like that.Lillian - Was she really with Goran that night?Goran - Is he the murderer? The author leaves you with a feeling that he is not, and that Sejer manipulated him to give a false confession. However, how did he know some key details - like her small bag which was the shape of a banana (Sejer said it was the shape of a srawberry once, and another time he said it was the shape of a melon, to trick Goran).Anders Kolding - Many clues also pointed towards him in the book. He messed around at the gas station shop and left at the same moment as Poona - and could have easily taken her. He also bought a car battery, the perfect murder weapon.Writing this, I realise how many unresolved parts there are in this story. I wish there were more answers, but the ambigious ending certainly made the book memorable. Therefore I give it 3 stars.
What do You think about The Indian Bride (2007)?
I am having great fun, if that's the appropriate word to use when referring to gruesome murder mysteries, discovering the authors of the far northern regions. Maybe it's the cold, dark winters, but Scandinavia seems to produce writers who are expert devisers of tightly written, complex, psychologically rich crime novels. My latest discovery is Karin Fossum from Norway. In this offering, Gunder Jomann a shy, sweet bachelor who some think of as slow, acts on an impulse, travels to India and finds himself a wife. On the very day Poona is to arrive to join Gunder in Elvestad, the brutally battered body of a foreign woman is found in a field not far from Gunder's house. Fossum's Inspector Konrad Sejer, quiet, formal, meticulous, investigates the murder and has many of the townsfolk on his "persons of interest" list. Gossip abounds as he zeroes in on the murderer, collecting evidence, checking alibis, and the normally neighborly townsfolk begin to look with suspicion on each other. Fossum skillfully reels out the plot in a way that keeps you guessing--just about everyone seems to have the potential for murder or the capacity to have abetted the killer. The resolution is a little murky, but there's a subtle twist in the final chapter that gave me a shiver.(Barbara L., Reader's Services)
—Evanston Public Library
Karin Fossum writes good mysteries. I liked the story and the ambiguity of the ending. Lots of threads left hanging. It's about a Norwegian bachelor of fifty who falls in love with the idea of marrying a beautiful and petite Indian woman---any Indian woman. He takes off for Mumbai and of course, meets a waitress in the first restaurant he enters, and that's all I can tell you, except that she has buck teeth. I like her treatment of the bachelor and his love affair. I like that in the end, you aren't really sure what has happened or what will happen. It's more real than most of these police procedurals.
—Michele Weiner
Whilst ostensibly a police procedural, Calling Out For You has a somewhat different approach to most books in the sub-genre, focusing as much on the local community and how it reacts to a heinous crime in its midst as it does on the investigation. The result is a narrative strongly focused on exploring various characters and their interactions and the themes of uncertainty, doubt, suspicion and loyalty. Fossum nicely plays the heartstrings with respect to the doomed relationship between Gunder and Poona, and the tale has a strong emotional register throughout. Inspector Sejer is a reflexive policeman who steadily goes about his work, trying to build a case with limited evidence and cooperation. The scenes where he interviews a suspect are particularly nicely done, illustrating the subtleties of his approach. Overall, an engaging and unsettling read that provides some degree of closure, but leaves the reader with thoughtful questions to ponder.
—Rob Kitchin
