Bad Intentions

Once they were just little kids with skinny legs and pointy knees. How did they become so evil?

Any second now Axel’s green Mercedes will appear around the bend. While he waits, he chews his nails. He has bitten them right down. The tips of his fingers are red and sore. He thinks about everything that has happened and about how he is going to move on. He knows he has to make a choice…. But sometimes we need to face reality. And perhaps that is not fair, but nothing about this situation is fair. It’s best to keep my mouth shut, he thinks, I’m protecting Axel and Reilly. They are my friends, and we’re in this together for ever.

Despite the fact that it is #7 in Fossum's Inspector Sejer series this is not a police procedural. It show more is rather a melancholic exploration of the way guilt can tunnel its way through the minds of those who feel it. Jon is the first to break and from then on the slippery slide is inevitable for the others. Who will crack next? And did they actually commit a crime?

Sejer and his colleague Skarre seem almost to take a backseat in this novel, observers and prompters to the final undoing:

He sat listening to the hum of the police station. He liked being a part of a big engine. He liked interrogating people, he liked spotting the lie when it came. A lie had its own pitch, and over many years he had learned to recognize it. He liked the moment when the confession finally spilled out, when all the cards were on the table and the course of events could be mapped and filed.

The story is an exploration too of how sometimes the victims of crime can unexpectedly become allies who force the truth to come out.
There is so much to think about in BAD INTENTIONS and it really came up to my expectations. show less

The question in this excellent thriller by Karen Fossum isn't who, but what, and the suspense is gripping. The first act puts us at woodland cabin next to a lake, where three young men venture out onto the water in a small boat. One falls, or jumps, in: the others do not attempt to save him, but go back to shore and "discover" in the morning that their comrade is missing. The dead young man was under intense psychological pressure related to a recent unspecified incident involving all three. Did it drive him to suicide, and what was it? That's the question that the book explores, with the relentless Inspector Sejer becoming more and more convinced that the two men who survive are guilty of a crime. It is fascinating and compelling to show more follow the gradual peeling back of the facts in the case, and of the personalities and pasts of people in the case. Very low key, but a powerful read nonetheless. show less

Karin Fossum is an author who uses observation acutely, whilst being more than willing to play with both expectations and the outer reaches of readers' comfort zones. Each of her books uses a different type of scenario to explore human behaviour and quirks. In BAD INTENTIONS she is looking at the nature of manipulation, conscience, and absolute and total egocentricity. She's also very very good at creepy - be it the characters or the setting, and in BAD INTENTIONS there's some of each.

BAD INTENTIONS is the ninth novel overall, seventh available in English, from Norwegian writer Fossum's series based around Inspector Konrad Sejer. These books are all psychological thrillers, within a police procedural setting. But really, the point of show more all of all of them is to look into a variety of different mindsets - that of the person committing the crime, and often also those observing or affected.

BAD INTENTIONS is about three men - Alex, Reilly and Jon. Friends from childhood, Jon suffers from anxiety attacks and has such severe psychological problems that he's been hospitalised. Alex and Reilly have taken him to their favourite place, a remote cabin in the forest beside a lake, as a treat - to try to cheer him up. Restless the 3 friends row out onto Dead Water Lake, where Jon panics and jumps into the water. One friend wants to save him, the other stops him. A shared story is concocted, suicide is blamed, and they wait until the following morning before calling the police. Konrad Sejer is assigned the case and he and his team quickly start to see inconsistencies, not only in the stories that the boys are telling, but also in Jon himself. Suicide seems so unlikely for someone improving, developing relationships, sorting his life out.

This is a very clever plot that effortlessly demonstrates the snowballing affect of attempted cover ups. In this case, the cover-up of Jon's death is just yet another link in a chain of lies and bad choices (intentions if you like) that goes way back. But as with any of Fossum's books - it's not just about the cover-up, BAD INTENTIONS is also about friendship, damaged people and breathtaking ruthlessness.

Best of all, BAD INTENTIONS is extremely believable. Okay so that's probably not a "best" thing, but this book describes events that are totally feasible - there isn't a single moment's reading where you are left thinking "no, surely not". Cleverly written, insightful and informative, this is a book that is suspenseful and entertaining whilst also being extremely thought-provoking. Exactly what you'd expect from this fantastic series. show less

When an institutionalized young man, suffering from a nervous condition, is found at the bottom of Dead Water lake after a night camping out with 2 of his friends, a verdict of suicide, is released. However, Inspector Sejer is not convinced that foul play didn't have a hand in his death, despite evidence to the contrary. There's just something about the way he died, and the statements made by the man's therapist and girlfriend, which didn't seem to indicate he was in the frame of mind to do away with his own life. But when the body of a Vietnamese man surfaces, a very tenuous link emerges and the pressure Inspector Sejer puts on 2 individuals brings out cracks in stories and accelerating panic which culminates in a surprising end.

This show more is a much leaner book in the Inspector Sejer series, but no less complex and enjoyable. In this, the author focuses on 3 main characters, and identifies the culprits from the start. But what she keeps from us, is the mystery behind the roles they play in each others' lives and the secret they share which needs to be kept at all costs. The psychological anguish a heavy guilt lays on a couple of the characters and the escapism they adopt to cope is well analyzed in this story. show less

I couldn't put this book down even thought my adored Inspector Sejer plays an exceedingly minimal part in and even though Fossum broadly hints at what happened (although withholding the details until the end). Two friends in their early 20s sign a third friend out of a mental hospital for the weekend and head to a cabin by a lake. Something goes very wrong and the mentally unstable friend drowns. One of the remaining friends is a charismatic control freak and the other is always high or yearning to get high. The hint is that something happened some months ago when a younger man went missing and this is what sent the friend to the mental hospital and drove the other friend to getting high. What makes this book un-put-downable is, as show more always, Fossum's brilliant characterizations. I'm going on to the next one, which is the last that has been translated into English. show less

Karin Fossum is new to me author and another Nordic author who has made her name known in North America.

Bad Intentions is the ninth offering in her Inspector Konrad Sejer series. The book opens with three friends spending a weekend at a cabin. Their interactions seem odd and tainted by an alluded to event in the past. The weekend ends with one of them dead. Inspector Sejer and his partner Inspector Jakob Skarre are called in. The victim Jon Moreno had been hospitalized for depression and was out on a weekend pass with his friends. The friends insist he must have been suicidal, but Jon's new girlfriend doesn't agree.

I found Fossum's writing to be very stark, spare and almost bleak. Not in a bad way though. It was just a very different show more take on a crime novel. There weren't long graphic descriptions of the crime. Instead Fossum focuses on the characters, their inner thoughts and psyches, and she does it very, very well. The thought processes of the two friends left alive are the quite frightening part of this book. The event in the past that has affected the lives of these three young men is slowly revealed - I was eager to see what it was.

I appreciated the banter between Sejer and Skarre, but felt I didn't really come to know them in this slim novel. They are protagonists I would like to know better - I would pick up another book by Karin Fossum without hesitation show less

"Bad Intentions" is the seventh crime novel in Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer series. I cannot claim to have read all seven of the novels, but the three I have read so far certainly encourage me to seek out the rest of the series. The books, all of which are set in Norway, are psychological crime novels in which character development and motivation are every bit as important as plot and action. Those enjoying this type of crime fiction will do well to seek out the work of Karin Fossum.

Alex, Reilly and Jon have been a trio since they were youngsters. Now that they are young men, Jon is so troubled that he has been confined to a mental health facility for treatment. Alex and Reilly, hoping to ease their friend's mind, get permission to show more bring him with them for a weekend's outing on remote Dead Water Lake. When tragedy strikes in the middle of the night, and one of the boys drowns in the lake, the other two wait until morning to report the accident.

Inspector Sejer, filtering the story about their friend's supposed suicide through his years of experience, senses that something is wrong. Things do not quite add up, but there is little he can do to disprove what Alex and Reilly insist happened that night - until the body of another teen associated with Alex, Reilly and Jon floats to the surface.

As Sejer and his assistant, Jacob Skarre, begin to tighten the screws on Alex and Reilly, their best hope is that one of the two will crack long enough to reveal what really happened to the two dead men. Meanwhile, Fossum carries the reader deep into the minds of several secondary characters that have an interest in the outcome of Sejer's investigation.

The mothers of the two victims form an unlikely friendship, based at first on nothing but their shared mourning, that surprises both of them with its intensity. The women see their sons as innocent victims of a world gone mad - but only one of them is right about the innocent part. Both of them, however, are determined to learn the truth about their sons' last hours.

At the heart of the story is the relationship of Alex and Reilly, a relationship poisoned forever by the loss of Jon. Alex has always called the shots with Reilly and Jon, and he will tolerate no resistance from Reilly now, just when the wrong move can send both of them to prison for the rest of their lives. What really happened on the most important two nights in the lives of four young men is slowly revealed as Fossum allows Alex and Reilly to reveal themselves.

Karin Fossum writes rather sparingly (the book is less than 200 pages in length) but she creates such memorable characters, on both sides of the crime equation, that her novels remain with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Rated at: 4.0 show less