When the Devil Holds the Candle

When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum is the third book in her Inspector Konrad Sejer series to be published in North America. The story follows a couple of young men who are looking for adventure and the money to fund it. There is an incident where they try to rob a young mother and then later Andreas and his friend Zipp decide to follow an older woman through the dark streets and then break into her home. Andreas is the one to enter the house while Zipp waits in the dark back yard. But Andreas never comes out.

The author builds the tension slowly over the course of the book, and by the final third of the story, the pages were turning quickly. Each character in the book is skilfully developed and all appear to be hiding show more secrets. This is a tense, psychological thriller where the police are mostly sidelined till the end of the book and while the conclusion was very dark and very chilling it was all too believable. Every book in this series is better than the one that went before it and Karin Fossum has become an author that I know I can totally rely on to deliver a superb story. show less

Incredibly lean, pitch black riff on Misery and The Girl Next Door. Bleaaaaak crime novel which the detective wanders in and out of, providing only occasional reprieves from a real all time bummer of a series of events. Impeccably written, psychologically rich, read like a modern horror classic in the guise of a crime novel. Was able to be read in isolation of any of the other books in the series too, though I'm def gonna go back to the beginning and see what else Fossum has to offer.

This was an exceedingly disturbing novel, the fourth in the Inspector Sejer series. Andreas and Zipp are two young men with time on their hands, who drift into purse snatching to pay for beer and taunting girls and children for the fun of it. Andreas is the leader and he has secrets; Zipp is very much the follower. Irma Funder is an unstable, "crazy" woman of 60 or so, who steadfastly maintains she is normal. Fossum has an uncanny ability to get inside Irma's head as she muses incessantly. When Andreas and Zipp collide with Irma, tragic consequences result. Andreas has disappeared as the novel opens, and the reader gradually learns what happens, as do, eventually, Inspector Sejer and his young sidekick (who I like more and more) Jacob show more Skarre. It is all very unsettling and creepy (and the reader learns even more unsettling things at the end). (As a side note, Sejer and Sara have gotten together and she is busy trying to shake up his very settled life with a lot of fun, as she sees it.) show less

A burglary goes awry for the burglar when the victim strikes back and holds him hostage in a dank cellar. I really enjoyed how all the characters have complex backgrounds and ulterior motives that help complicate the plot and keep the stakes high. Sejer's side story with his new girlfriend, psychiatrist Sara, who is so very different from him, adds a bit of entertaining levity to the story. Fossum is really great at making intricate characters who add lots of texture to her nicely worked out plots.

Translated from the Norwegian and once again starring her detective creation, Inspector Konrad Sejer and his sidekick, Jacob Skarre, the book tells the tale of two delinquent youths who accidentally kill a child when snatching a purse from a pram.
Later that day, a life-changing event occurs between the two friends, Andreas and Zipp, who – in order to erase its memory – choose to rob an elderly woman.
Except that Andreas enters her house, but never leaves again. While Zipp ponders where he is and the police close the net around the baby's murderers, Fossum takes you inside the house to witness the grim goings on.
She draws the reader into the mind of the old woman, explaining her actions and her perceptions of the young man she has show more trapped there, even as she recounts the grisly events taking place behind her closed doors.
It also touches on the ongoing saga of Sejer, his newfound love for Sara and the hassles that affect his family and friends. show less

“Because with him I was no longer Irma. I was Irma with Andreas. And that was not the same as Irma with Ingemar. Or Irma with Runi. Chemistry, you know. Each time a new formula is created. Irma and Andreas destroyed each other. Is that true?” (Ch 1)

Aging, peculiar, and more than a little creepy, Irma Funder reflects occasionally on her deceased husband, Henry, and her grown son, Ingemar. It is not quite clear what happened to her husband, but with her son she has a distant, absent relationship. One thing, however, is crystal clear: something is not right with Irma. When she has a chance encounter with teenager Andreas Winther and his best friend Sivert Skorpe, known only as Zipp, the novel turns full-on psychological thriller. The show more boys, who had thought to get up to some criminal mischief, are about to get an education from an elderly widow.

Fossum was recommended to me as a Scandinavian crime writer worth reading, and I’ve found this to be the case, happily. When the Devil Holds the Candle is the third in her Inspector Konrad Sejer series. Recommended. show less

This third of Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer mysteries to be published in the United States takes the unusual approach of hardly mentioning Sejer at all for roughly the first third of the novel. Instead, Fossum places the reader into the minds and lives of the three people, be they criminals, victims, or both, who drive the plot of this stark psychological thriller.

Andreas Winther, a stunningly handsome 18-year old, is totally self-absorbed and is hiding what he considers to be a terrible secret even from the one friend he has. Zipp is that friend, and the two of them have come to depend on each other in a way that is far from healthy. Both boys still live at home with their mothers and, although he is unemployed, Zipp has a car that show more they can use to cruise around town looking for trouble. As long as Andreas is willing to share his wages with Zipp and they can borrow or steal a little extra cash on the side, they are happy enough with their lives. Irma Funder, a strangely eccentric elderly woman, realizes that she is "different" and works hard to appear normal to her neighbors and her few friends. It is when these three lives intersect one day that things come crashing down for all of them.

Nothing went right for Andreas and Zipp that day. Their mugging of a young mother pushing a baby carriage left them with only a small bit of cash and the knowledge that the runaway carriage had rolled downhill and roughly ejected the baby. A few minutes later, Andreas giving in to the temptation to reveal his secret to Zipp, was embarrassed by the horrified and disgusted reaction of his friend. When an elderly woman passed them on the street, Andreas decided that she offered him a chance to regain Zipp's respect, so he followed her to her home in order to rob her there.

What Andreas didn't expect was that he was dealing with someone even crazier than himself, someone who was willing to push him backward down the cellar stairs in order to defend herself. His underestimation of what the old woman was capable of left him lying at the foot of the stairs with a broken neck, unable to move his arms or legs, and at the mercy of a woman who decided that she liked having him down there.

Inspector Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre at first consider the purse snatching incident and the disappearance of someone like Andreas Winther to be, at most, petty crimes. They see no connection between the two incidents and only slowly come to realize that the old woman who has visited the police station, and called them at least one other time, might know something of the whereabouts of Andreas. But as they patiently push Zipp for some answers, things begin to make sense and it becomes a question of whether or not they will solve the crime in time to save Andreas' life.

Karin Fossum's combination of a police procedural and a psychological thriller works especially well because of the characters she has created on both ends of the spectrum. She manages to make even her most unlikable characters into sympathetic figures because of the insights she offers into what makes them the people that they are. And, at the same time, she continues to make the reader care about the personal lives of her two recurring characters, Konrad Sejer and Jacob Skarre. Fans of the Sejer series will enjoy this one, but it works equally well for readers unfamiliar with the other books in the series.

Rated at: 3.0 show less