In the Darkness

Eva Magnus and her seven-year-old daughter Emma are walking by the river when they see a body in the water. Eva, who is an artist and a single mother, heads for the nearest payphone, telling her daughter she is calling the police. Instead she calls her father and makes small talk, pretending to her daughter that she's called the police. Then she and her daughter head for McDonald's as if nothing happened. When the police arrive, alerted by another person, it doesn’t take long for Inspector Sejer and his team to establish that the dead man, Egil Einarsson, was stabbed to death. He had been missing for months but by now the trail has gone cold. Inspector Sejer finds it almost as mysterious as the other unsolved case he is working on, show more the murder of a known prostitute, Maja Durban, found dead just before Egil went missing.

Sejer’s investigations leads us back to Eva and her strange reaction to the corpse, as well as a mysterious note left by the dead man. The investigation keeps pushing Sejer back to Eva and he eventually brings her in for questioning. What follows then is a complete change in the narrative. The events leading up to the murder begin to unfold and take up the majority of the book, told in a third-person narrative flashback, to a time when the two murder victims were still alive. The story is written in an intense way, filled with seemingly unrelated threads.

I've had the Inspector Sejer series on my TBR list for a long, long time and for some reason I just have never started it. Maybe it's because I have so many other series underway and didn't feel like I could add another, but I've been making a terrible mistake. Sejer is fascinating due to his sheer ordinariness. He's a conservative, middle-aged widower who is patient and a good listener. He's a great detective, simply because he refuses to give up. I'm pushing this series right to the top and can't wait to read the next one. show less

Eva Magnus and her seven-year-old daughter Emma are walking by the river when they see a body in the water. Eva, who is an artist and a single mother, heads for the nearest payphone, telling her daughter she is calling the police. Instead she calls her father and makes small talk, pretending to her daughter that she's called the police. Then she and her daughter head for McDonald's as if nothing happened. When the police arrive, alerted by another person, it doesn’t take long for Inspector Sejer and his team to establish that the dead man, Egil Einarsson, was stabbed to death. He had been missing for months but by now the trail has gone cold. Inspector Sejer finds it almost as mysterious as the other unsolved case he is working on, show more the murder of a known prostitute, Maja Durban, found dead just before Egil went missing.

Sejer’s investigations leads us back to Eva and her strange reaction to the corpse, as well as a mysterious note left by the dead man. The investigation keeps pushing Sejer back to Eva and he eventually brings her in for questioning. What follows then is a complete change in the narrative. The events leading up to the murder begin to unfold and take up the majority of the book, told in a third-person narrative flashback, to a time when the two murder victims were still alive. The story is written in an intense way, filled with seemingly unrelated threads.

I've had the Inspector Sejer series on my TBR list for a long, long time and for some reason I just have never started it. Maybe it's because I have so many other series underway and didn't feel like I could add another, but I've been making a terrible mistake. Sejer is fascinating due to his sheer ordinariness. He's a conservative, middle-aged widower who is patient and a good listener. He's a great detective, simply because he refuses to give up. I'm pushing this series right to the top and can't wait to read the next one. show less

Karin Fossum is a well-established writer of crime fiction whose novels have been translated from their original Norwegian into more than 20 languages worldwide. She has won several awards and her Inspector Sejer series, of which this book is the first, has been published in more than thirty countries. (Although the second book in this series was published in England in 2002, and many others from the series have since made the transition, it has taken another ten years for the first to be published here.) This was not an author I had previously heard of but came highly recommended by my reading group.

The premise

Eva is walking by the river with her daughter when she sees a body floating on the surface. Assuring her daughter that she will show more call the police, Eva steps into the phone booth – and calls someone else entirely.

Inspector Sejer quickly establishes that the dead man, Egil, suffered a violent death six months earlier – just a few days after a local prostitute was murdered. Could there be a connection? If so, what? In the months between these murders and the discovery of the body, both cases have gone cold.

At home, Eva receives a phone call late at night. When the stranger hangs up, she stares fearfully into the dark night. Who called? Why? What does Eva know?

My thoughts

I found the premise interesting, especially the idea of a detective having to pick up a ‘cold case’ and try to find new clues. It seemed obvious from the blurb that Eva knew more than her daughter did and I was looking forward to finding out exactly how much she knew.

The first few pages are gripping. There is a brief piece of text in italics which works as a prologue and involves a woman running into a dead end. This obviously creates great suspense, especially as the man chasing her is so calm in comparison to the woman’s panic. This is followed by a very brief initial chapter in which Detective Sejer leads a bruised and bleeding Eva into an interview room. Again, I felt that this worked well to create suspense and I was keen to read on to find out what happened.

Fossum is clearly more interested in the motives behind these crimes than in the detective work itself. Although Sejer does the necessary re-interviewing of witnesses, and in doing so manages to discover a new angle on the case, the real focus is on the personalities and feelings of the main characters. Eva is intense, burdened with secrets and surprisingly casual about her abandonment by her husband. Her father is lonely and struggles to eat more than porridge without company. Sejer lives a quiet life and occasionally visits his daughter and grandson. He seems to care a lot about the people he communicates with through his work and, in particular, is very kind to Egil’s son. Necessarily, this focus on thoughts and feelings rather than dramatic discoveries means that the pace is a little gentle, yet there are sufficient developments for the crime solving to seem suitably brisk. At this point I still found the story quite compelling.

This initial pace is well maintained until around a third of the way through the book, when there is a dramatic shift in the focus of the narration and the reader finds out what actually happened six months ago. This is a slightly unusual and therefore perhaps risky approach for a crime writer to take. It becomes evident to the reader who committed the murders and the only question left becomes why. Gradually, most of the rest of the book answers that question and, in places, it almost becomes an exploration of the life of a prostitute. I was initially surprised by the rather positive spin placed on this ‘profession’, but this is soon undermined by subsequent events and Fossum does not ultimately endorse the career, even if her detective refuses to condemn it. I was not surprised to learn that Fossum has previously worked with addicts and other vulnerable people; she seems determined to explore the psychology of people who commit crimes, rather than simply condemning them. That said, there is a suitable smattering of villains here to keep the reader’s interest.

During this section I didn’t feel the same urge to read on, as I thought I knew roughly why the murders had happened (I was right) and didn’t feel that interested in knowing the finer details. However, the narration continued to flow in a way that occasionally revealed surprises, and there was enough interest in the way the story was written to keep my interest. There are some tense and dramatic experiences along the way that help to keep suspense high.

The ending is rather melancholy and contained an appropriate twist that I hadn’t foreseen but could completely believe in. I liked this as I felt that it made the ending stronger. As the story closes, Sejer is already beginning to work on his next case. Unusually, this does not seem to be intended as a whopping great cliffhanger for the reader to ensure that they buy the next book, but simply as a realistic way of ending this story; a detective will always have work to do. I think the realism was key to my enjoyment of this book, although ‘enjoy’ almost seems inappropriate: this is quite a dark story and no-one is redeemed.

I was slightly surprised to discover that this was the first book in the series as Fossum does not spend a great deal of time establishing her detective. He has a dead wife, an old dog and spends his weekends at the Aerodrome. For this reason, I had assumed that I had picked up the series midway through. However, Fossum is on record as stating that her detective is really a necessity for the plot rather than necessarily important as a character in his own right. Again, I liked this approach. It means that the crime is the important element of the book, and the psychology of the other characters, and the plot is not overshadowed by the detective’s own life.

Fossum is also a published poet and I felt that this has influenced her writing style, which feels very poetic and descriptive, in an understated way. Her characters are very reflective and there is some discussion of the purpose of art and the true meaning of selling oneself. This helped to make the book read more like a literary novel than a simple work of crime fiction and I quite enjoyed the way it was written.

Conclusions

Although the book developed in a way that I hadn’t anticipated and became a why-dunnit rather than a who-dunnit, I quite enjoyed reading this and would be happy to read another book in the series. However, at 314 pages this is a reasonably quick read (the font is large and clear) which means that I would hesitate to pay the RRP of £12.99, especially as this is a paperback book (albeit a sturdy one) rather than a hardback. I felt that this worked well as a standalone book, which I liked, although this could partly be because it was the first in the series.

Read this if:

• You are a fan of Norwegian crime.
• You enjoy a reflective writing style which focuses on characters’ thoughts and feelings rather than epic car chases or detailed analysis of forensic clues.
• You like crime novels that focus on the criminals and their motivations rather than delving too deeply into the personal lives of the police officers involved in solving the crime.

Avoid this if:

• You like crime fiction with a lot of suspects and a lot of potential paths.
• You like crime fiction that focuses very firmly on the crime solving rather than on the psyche of the villains and victims.
• You want a main character you can develop a bond with and follow through a crime series to see them develop (although Sejer has his own series, in this book he is certainly a conduit for the action rather than a compelling character in his own right). show less

I have often bemoaned the fact that American publishers have the annoying tendency to release European mystery series books out of order. This was done in the case of Karin Fossum's excellent Inspector Sejer series. Eight books were published before Eva's Eye, which is actually the first. For once I'm glad that they weren't published in the proper sequence. Konrad Sejer is one of my favorite police officers, but if I had been introduced to him with this book, I doubt if I would have continued with the series.

The reason for this is because Eva's Eye has everything to do with the character of Eva Magnus and little to do with Konrad Sejer. Everything revolves around Eva's eye: her art (in which Sejer seems to be the only person who sees show more something meaningful), her young daughter Emma, how Eva views her life... everything. Eva Magnus is a fascinating character who grabs the focus of the book and runs away with it. As is also seen in The Murder of Harriet Krohn, Fossum seems to like to focus on a different character from time to time.

In comparison Konrad Sejer is merely interesting. If I'd read this book first, I would have admired Fossum's characterization of the title character and given a passing nod to Sejer's determination to solve these two puzzling cases-- but there just didn't seem to be enough about this oftentimes brilliant man to warrant my coming back for more.

All this makes it sound as though I did not enjoy the book. On the contrary-- I enjoyed it a lot. As the story gradually unfolds and I learned how deeply involved Eva is in every facet, I had to know more about this self-absorbed woman. At book's end I could only shake my head in disbelief (and admiration) at how well Fossum put this intricate plot together. And-- having already become familiar with Sejer, his personality and his deductive methods-- I could only admire him, too. I'm just glad I didn't read this book first. show less

A steady moving, middle to ends told mystery of two deaths only connected by proximity of the victims on the night of the first death. The coincidences of the plot are the weakness of the book, but the characters have a real texture.

A thoughtful novel. Inspector Sejer takes on the case of the dead body in the river, found by a mother and daughter out for a walk. Eva Magnus struggles with making ends meet by selling her paintings, and tries to find equilibrium with her ex-husband and chubby child, seven-year-old Emma.

Oddly, when they find the body Eva does not call the police. She pretends to do so, making a call on a nearby phone, but actually calls someone else. In time, Sejer wonders about this.

Sejer also wonders if there might be a connection between the death of a prostitute that happened a few days before the man in the river went missing.

It takes a lot of puzzling and investigating for Sejer to put together the story. We readers are helped by chapters show more starring Eva and her thoughts and actions, so that we can drag ourselves to the same conclusions in the end.

I found it highly readable and absorbing, and a bit sad. show less

Eva is walking by the river one afternoon when a body floats to the surface of the icy water. She tells her daughter to wait patiently while she calls the police, but when she reaches the phone box Eva dials another number altogether. The dead man, Egil, has been missing for months, and it doesn't take long for Inspector Sejer and his team to establish that he was the victim of a very violent killer.

But the trail has gone cold.

It's as puzzling as another unsolved case on Sejer's desk: the murder of a prostitute who was found dead just before Egil went missing.
While Sejer is trying to piece together the fragments of a seemingly impossible case, Eva gets a phone call late one night. A stranger speaks and then swiftly hangs up. Eva looks show more out into the darkness and listens. All is quiet...


"The trouble with loving Scandinavian crime fiction is that often the books in any particular series will suffer from TOOO syndrome – translated out of order".

However the Konrad Sejer series suffers less than most - I have read them in totally random order, as in whatever was available from work and can’t say that it made much difference.

Sejer is such a “nice” person; none of the maverick, issues with authority, angst ridden policing for him. No, he is old-fashioned, traditional, polite to women and children and his biggest vice is one hand rolled cigarette in the evening whilst sipping a whisky and petting his dog. He understands things are never black and white and why people are driven to horrendous violence and murder through desperation or sheer bad judgement/luck.

All her stories begin simply enough but the threads become more twisted and tangled, the exquisitely drawn characters leap off the page and into your mind.

Fossum’s novels have a haunting rather melancholy quality that stay with you as you ponder the “what would I have done” scenarios – but they are always believable.

The mood of this brilliant series can be summed up in this following quote from In The Darkness; Eva and her father are talking about why good people can do bad things:

‘It’s a sort of threshold they cross’ he said pensively. ‘I wonder what it is, what it means. Why some people overstep it, and others could never dream of doing so.’

‘Everyone can” Eva said. ‘It’s circumstances which dictate. And they don’t step over either – they stray over. They don’t see it until they’re on the other side, and then it’s too late.’

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