Don't Look Back

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Meet Inspector Sejer: smart and enigmatic, tough but fair. At the foot of the imposing Kollen Mountain lies a small, idyllic village, where neighbors know neighbors and children play happily in the streets. But when the body of a teenage girl is found by the lake at the mountaintop, the town's tranquility is shattered forever. Annie was strong, intelligent, and loved by everyone. What went so terribly wrong? Doggedly, yet subtly, Inspector Sejer uncovers layer upon layer of distrust and lies beneath the town's seemingly perfect façade. Critically acclaimed across Europe, Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar. ** From Publishers Weekly In Fossum's moody and subtle U.S. debut, the fifth in her Inspector Sejer series, the popular Norwegian mystery writer displays her mastery of psychological suspense. Richly drawn characters reveal much about Norwegian society, though the setting, a picturesque valley town northwest of Oslo, isn't distinctive. A little girl disappears from her middle-class neighborhood, then returns home unharmed. Meanwhile, the search party discovers the nude corpse of a teenager, Annie Holland, and Fossum seamlessly shifts the story to a murder investigation, using several points of view to create red herrings that add to the suspense. Both girls lived in the same claustrophobic community where the residents claim to know one another but, naturally, don't really. With few clues and no witnesses, seasoned Inspector Konrad Sejer and his eager young assistant Jacob Skarre must uncover the hidden relationships and secrets they hope will lead to the killer of the well-liked, talented Annie. When they learn that the victim's behavior changed suddenly eight months earlier after a child she babysat died by accident, the plot shifts course again and drives to a stunning conclusion and ominous final scene. With the intuitive, introspective Sejer, a widower who lives alone with his dog and still grieves for his late wife, Fossum has created a fine character whom readers will want to get to know better. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Insularity, or the loss of it, is at the heart of the Scandinavian crime novel. In Henning Mankel's Kurt Wallander series, it is the opening of Sweden's borders and the collapse of insular homogeneity that breeds hatred and murder. In this nicely nuanced, first English translation of celebrated Norwegian author Fossum's work, insularity turns upon itself, as the residents of a small village where everyone knows too much about everyone else are torn asunder by the murder of a much-loved 15-year-old girl. Inspector Sejer, an aging, secretive cop still grieving for his late wife, accepts the distasteful job of cajoling secrets from the tight-lipped townspeople. Fossum expertly evokes the palpable tension beneath the surface of a seemingly idyllic community, as the characters' various psychological ticks are probed delicately but with devastating effect by the determined investigator. A disturbing ending, fraught with ambiguity, leaves the reader as unsettled as the shell-shocked villagers. Add another memorable series to the growing list of superb European procedurals. Bill Ott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review U.K. PRAISE FOR DON’T LOOK BACK “Shows just how well Fossum deserves her continental fame . . . It is a tribute to [her] skill that, even when the mystery is unraveled, the reader shares Sejer’s pained understanding of the killer’s deed.”—SUNDAY T I M E S (LONDON) About the Author KARIN FOSSUM is the author of many novels and two collections of short stories. Her crime novels featuring Inspector Sejer have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Oslo.