BookBrowse Reviews Don't Look Back: An Inspector Sejer Mystery by Karin Fossum

BookBrowse:

Masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. Thriller

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For access to our digital magazine, free books,and other benefits, become a member today.

From the book jacket: Critically acclaimed across Europe, Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar.

Comment: Karin Fossum is well known in her native country of Norway and much of Europe where her books are bestsellers and she is known as 'Norway's Queen of Crime', but this is her first book to be published in the USA.  The setting would seem to be just right for a 'cozy' detective mystery - a picturesque valley town - but this is not a cozy tale and as the nasty surprises build up it becomes apparent that all is not as it would seem to be in this insular, homogenous small town.  Incidentally, the excerpt that you can read at BookBrowse will probably lead you to think that you have a clear idea of how the mystery will unfold - but don't take it at face value - in the opening pages you're not actually witnessing a crime taking place but merely events leading up to the discovery of the real crime.  More than that I will not reveal!

This review first ran in the June 1, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.