Don’t Look Back: Konrad Sejer #2
By Karin Fossum
Synopsis:
Meet Inspector Sejer: smart and enigmatic, tough but fair. At the foot of the imposing Kollen Mountain lies a small, idyllic village, 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 façade.
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.
My thoughts:
I’m a little confused. Goodreads lists this as #2 in the series, but from the synopsis, it sounds like this is the first one in the series. Maybe there’s a prequel that was released earlier or something, I’m not sure.
In any case, the book features detectives Sejer and Skarre looking into the murder of a teenage girl. In this little town, everyone knows each other and everyone loved the dead girl. In fact, no one has anything bad to say about her, so who could want her dead?
I liked this book. I just found it at the library and decided to give it a try. I liked the Norwegian setting a lot. The characters were well drawn and I especially liked the detectives. I would definitely read another book in the series. However, the whole tone of the book was quite sad. I wouldn’t say there was a need for any trigger warnings, but there was definitely some unpleasant stuff sort of hanging in the background.
Sejer’s a widower, but he’s not the sad sack alcoholic detective with tons of baggage. That is far too common in Scandinavian mysteries. Very refreshing, IMO. 3.5 stars out of 5.
Speedy Reader 