Don't Look Back
by Karin Fossum, Translated by Felicity David (Harcourt Books, $23 295p.)
In a tiny village in Norway the hunt for a missing child uncovers the murder of a teenage girl. Annie was a star athlete, an excellent student, a popular and sought after babysitter in the village. Everyone liked her, none of her neighbors can fathom why she was killed or who could have done it.
Enter Inspector Konrad Sejer of the Oslo police. With quiet and ruthless determination, Sejer peels away the layers of respectability and conformity in the seemingly bucolic village like the layers of an onion. Disturbing facts are uncovered, lies are exposed, dark corners illuminated.
Meanwhile, the dead girl’s boyfriend is hiding something, but he himself doesn’t know what it is.
The investigation progresses and Inspector Sejer’s gruff sensitivity comes through as we learn that he is a widower, father and grandfather whose life is just starting to open up again after along period of grief.
An intense sense of place and the contrast of city and village life illuminate this compelling procedural which exposes the hypocrisy behind a seemingly perfect place.
This is the sixth Inspector Sejer mystery and the first translated into English.
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