In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Book Summary and Reviews of When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum

When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum

When the Devil Holds the Candle

Inspector Sejer Mysteries

by Karin Fossum

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Jul 2006, 272 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

When the theft of a purse from a stroller results in an infant's death, two teenagers are in trouble, and yet are unaware of the enormity of their crime, They try and commit another, with unforseen results. When Inspector Konrad Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre investigate, they see no connection between the infant's death and the reported disappearance of a local delinquent - while the confusion mounts the truth unfolds inside an old woman's home.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"This is not your usual police procedural -- Fossum's third Sejer novel ... is psychological suspense at its best." - Library Journal.

"Skillful characterization and revealing detail lift Fossum's third mystery to be published in the U.S." - Publishers Weekly.

"[T]he story is so chillingly told that we can only marvel at the author's skill at illustrating how a random sequence of events can cause so many lives to intersect in so many horrifying ways." - The New York Times.

"Fossum . . . writes like Ruth Rendell with the gloves off." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about When the Devil Holds the Candle was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Karin Fossum Author Biography

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.

Don't Look Back is the first of Fossum's police procedurals to be published in the USA. The second in the series, He Who Fears The Wolf was published in 2005, and other translations of the series in English include Calling Out For You and Black Seconds.

Fossum has recently been honored with Gumshoe Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller. She lives in a small town in southeastern Norway.

Author Interview

Other books by Karin Fossum at BookBrowse

13 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more mysteries...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...
  • Book Jacket
    The MANIAC
    by Benjamin Labatut
    The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut is an ambitious work that falls squarely into the category of fiction...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

Who Said...

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.