Don't Look Back

Conrad Sejer and his young sidekick Skarre are called to a small community to find a missing child, but instead the child finds a dead teenager. As usual, Fossum strips away the layers of social convention surrounding the characters with a delicate touch, showing that things are never what they seem and that nobody is immune from evil. Fossum doesn't 'do' suspense like other writers. She just lets it emerge as she quietly goes about her archaeology, brushing away the mystery until the truth is showing, like bones. And she doesn't let you leave the story congratulating yourself that justice has been done and order has been restored. She gives any comfort you might be feeling a sharp tug in the last pages, leaving the reader a little show more off-balance. show less

Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum is a solid 4 star read. I so enjoyed the complexities and shades of gray of this thriller/ mystery. This is Karin Fossum's first book that was translated into English -and what a wonderful read!

In this story we are introduced to Skarre and Sejer, the two Norwegian Detectives who make up the police duo of Karin Fossum's thriller/ mysteries. I so enjoy her writing. It's so refreshing compared to many North American thriller/ mysteries. The police are not corrupt, men are not busy chasing women, nor going to bed with every skirt in sight, and they have no need of swearing - at least in the two Karin Fossum's that I have read. Right there, Karin Fossum has it on many a thriller/ mystery written in North show more America.

I enjoyed the many aspects of so many lives that were investigated in the course of this mystery. Karin Fossum is great at developing psychological portraits of many of the characters, and giving us an understanding of why people do what they do. Things are not neccesarily black and white - and I appreciate that, as that is what life is so often like.

The story starts out with a missing six year old, Ragnhild......... and from there the body of 15 year old Annie is found dead beside a lake. Who did what, and why -and what are the ramifications and reasoning - if any - behind these events? Well, I do not want to give away the plot -but suffice it to say that Karin Fossum has become on of my favourite new thriller/ mystery writers. The story is mulitfaceted and the ending most thought provoking.

Karin Fossum gives such wonderful psychological insight into her character's - I think she is now one of my favourite authors. I highly recommend her! show less

Annie was fifteen. She was pretty, athletic and popular. No one would ever think of hurting her.. but someone did. Her body was found near a lake, shattering the tranquil setting of her sleepy hometown in Norway. Inspector Konrad Sejer, middle-aged, taciturn, is called in to investigate. Fossum is a strong writer, who builds her story quietly, carefully peeling off layers, revealing dark unsettling secrets. I like the fact that she does not just stay focused on the point of view of the Inspector but also spends time with some of the other characters, filling out the narrative. This is the first book in a series and one I highly recommend.

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Don't Look Back heralds the arrival of an exotic new crime series featuring Inspector Sejer, a smart and enigmatic hero, tough but fair. The setting is a small, idyllic village at the foot of Norway's Kollen Mountain, 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 facade.

Critically acclaimed across Europe, Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are show more masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable, and are now available in the United States for the first time.

My Review: Herein we're introduced to Inspector Konrad Sejer, homicide detective in a Norwegian city, as he solves the murder of the popular, universally beloved young athlete and all-around good girl Annie Holland. Sejer can't crack the shell of acclaim and plaudits that surround the dead girl. No one, and I mean NO ONE, will admit that she was anything but beautiful and perfectly kind. Well, no one except her slow-top sexpot older sister...make that half-sister...who finally, in an unedited moment, admits that she found Annie a bit snide at times. No one else, from her horrible harpy of a mother to her convicted rapist of a sports coach to the neighbor whose dead toddler she was the only one who could handle, will give Sejer the way in to her life that he needs to discover her killer.

Since this is a mystery, not real life, Sejer and his newly minted partner Jacob Skarre do find the way in, and the killer is brought to justice barely in time to prevent a third needless death. Along the way, as really happens when police start turning over rocks in the search for evidence, lives are altered, lives are ruined, and even lost; in the end, does the guilt of the murderer being proved make up for the pace of destruction left in the wake of the search? Fossum provides no answer, or does she pretend that it's even of more than passing concern for her characters.

I began this book excited, if a little reluctant; I am always conflicted when starting a series of mysteries. It's nice to know that there are a few more pleasures to be had with an agreeable set of characters; my orderly side likes to know that justice will be served; but then, well, then there's that oppressive sense that *yet*more*books* have landed on the pile of material that, should I live to be 150, will never disappear, or even appreciably diminish. That feels a little depressing to me, to have a task (however much I love the task, and I do) that simply cannot be finished. Sort of like laundry, a Sisyphean labor of impossibly distant closure. (Unless you launder naked and don't put on clothes until you go outside your house, everything is always a little dirty, and therefore always laundry. It's just depressing.)

And then the trouble set in. We have dead children, never ever a favorite theme of mine. We have violent men, never ever a favorite theme of mine. We have a grouchy, isolated older detective, kind of overused. But then we have Norway as our backdrop, fresh and new to me. We have prose that, in English translation, feels immediate and grippingly suspenseful. We have characters limned against a bright background in sharp, dark strokes, like reverse film noir...hard to do, and done well here. But on balance, I really don't feel four-starry about the book. I'll read more, of course. I'll even enjoy them, provided we don't have more dead children. But the bright bloom of excitement dimmed a bit, as I suppose was inevitable, and it seems to me that it needn't have. Other choices could have been made. But they weren't, and so here I am, only pleased, not overwhelmed.

Welcome to life as an adult, I suppose.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

In a small Norwegian village the near-naked body of a teenage girl is found at the lake. Once they identify her as Annie Holland Inspector Konrad Sejer and Officer Jacob Skarre learn that everyone liked the athletic young girl who babysat for most of the village’s children although many people mention the change in her behaviour some months before her death. Having precious little in the way of evidence they have to determine whether it was just a normal part of growing up or whether there an event in her life that may have had something to do with her death.

I’ve had this book in my TBR pile for over a year and it may have continued to languish there among all the others but for a post on a blog this week. What struck me show more particularly was a quote from Fossum about being interested in “‘the good guy who does something evil’ rather than the bogeyman.” Although I have read my share of rampaging serial killer books I generally don’t find them as satisfying as those that explore the circumstances and motivations behind ordinary people reaching some kind of breaking point and so was keen to get stuck into the first Inspector Sejer book translated into English.

I knew absolutely nothing about the story when I started reading (I deliberately didn’t look at the blurb) and was hooked by the twist in the opening. As the book started I thought it was going to be about one sort of crime and just as I geared myself up for that it turned into something completely different. From then on the story was pieced together like an intricate jigsaw with many pieces needing to be turned this way and that before slotting into place to help reveal the whole picture. Without car chases or guns blazing the story managed to be suspense-filled and captivating from beginning to end as Sejer and Skarre teased out important details about village life from its inhabitants

Fossum builds up her characters in a similar way as she does the plot: slowly revealing their secrets, pasts and fears over the course of the book. As you’d expect with the main characters we develop a fairly clear picture of Sejer and Skarre over the course of the novel but the minor characters too are equally well depicted, even if only in one aspect of their lives. Annie’s father’s conversation with the man in charge of the crematorium is one of the most beautiful depictions of a grieving father I have read.

Don’t Look Back has all the things I love most in crime fiction: interesting, believable characters, a puzzle-like plot, a setting I can get lost in and a tangible credibility that sometime somewhere that exact scenario has played itself out in reality. Or will one day. show less

In this Inspector Sejer novel, the first to be translated into English (but not the first in the series, which I will now seek out), Sejer must investigate the murder of a 15-year-old girl, Annie, who was widely liked in the Norwegian town in which she lived, but who had recently become much quieter after being very outgoing and friendly when younger. That change turns out to be a big clue to her murder, although the reason why doesn't emerge to the end of the book. Fossum excels at characterization; not only Sejer but also Annie and the many other characters in the book spring to life. There is a theme, also, of children, how they differ and how they are treated, in some cases brutally. Finally, there was more of plot than I'm used to show more in the mysteries by Camilleri and van Wetering I've been reading lately, and I enjoyed how Fossum let the reader see the mystery through Sejer's eyes, never knowing more than he knew. I'll continue reading this series. show less

Yes, it's fine. Spare and minimalist, which is what I, for one, look for in Norwegian literature of any kind, frankly. The protagonist, Inspector Sejer, is clever, thoughtful and enigmatic. Okay, perhaps just a shade TOO enigmatic. I wanted to know him better, but that might come with the next books.

I did see the ending coming from quite a ways off and I feel there's one great misstep involving an object being carried that is far too heavy not to tip off anyone at the scene (sorry, trying not to give anything away here).

But it kept my interest and made me curious about the next in the series, although probably not enough to make me rush off and start reading it right away.