Don't Look Back (Inspector Sejer Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Karin Fossum (Author), Felicity David (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2004

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Fossum's moody and subtle U.S. debut, the fifth in her Inspector Sejer series, the popular Norwegian mystery writer displays her mastery of psychological suspense. Richly drawn characters reveal much about Norwegian society, though the setting, a picturesque valley town northwest of Oslo, isn't distinctive. A little girl disappears from her middle-class neighborhood, then returns home unharmed. Meanwhile, the search party discovers the nude corpse of a teenager, Annie Holland, and Fossum seamlessly shifts the story to a murder investigation, using several points of view to create red herrings that add to the suspense. Both girls lived in the same claustrophobic community where the residents claim to know one another but, naturally, don't really. With few clues and no witnesses, seasoned Inspector Konrad Sejer and his eager young assistant Jacob Skarre must uncover the hidden relationships and secrets they hope will lead to the killer of the well-liked, talented Annie. When they learn that the victim's behavior changed suddenly eight months earlier after a child she babysat died by accident, the plot shifts course again and drives to a stunning conclusion and ominous final scene. With the intuitive, introspective Sejer, a widower who lives alone with his dog and still grieves for his late wife, Fossum has created a fine character whom readers will want to get to know better.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Insularity, or the loss of it, is at the heart of the Scandinavian crime novel. In Henning Mankel's Kurt Wallander series, it is the opening of Sweden's borders and the collapse of insular homogeneity that breeds hatred and murder. In this nicely nuanced, first English translation of celebrated Norwegian author Fossum's work, insularity turns upon itself, as the residents of a small village where everyone knows too much about everyone else are torn asunder by the murder of a much-loved 15-year-old girl. Inspector Sejer, an aging, secretive cop still grieving for his late wife, accepts the distasteful job of cajoling secrets from the tight-lipped townspeople. Fossum expertly evokes the palpable tension beneath the surface of a seemingly idyllic community, as the characters' various psychological ticks are probed delicately but with devastating effect by the determined investigator. A disturbing ending, fraught with ambiguity, leaves the reader as unsettled as the shell-shocked villagers. Add another memorable series to the growing list of superb European procedurals. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151010323
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010325
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #971,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

KARIN FOSSUM is the author of the internationally successful Inspector Konrad Sejer crime series. Her recent honors include a Gumshoe Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller. She lives in a small town in southeastern Norway.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Norwegian Procedural -- #5 in the Sejer Series, October 30, 2003

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Look Back (Paperback)

After being widely translated in Europe, it's about time that Fossum's excellent police procedurals are becoming available in English. Unfortunately this first book in translation is the fifth in the series, and so a bit of the background is lacking. The story starts with the disappearance of a young girl in a small Norwegian village, but adroitly segues into a murder investigation as the search for the girl turns up an unrelated naked corpse. The town is one of several small communities served by the city police, and grizzled Inspector Sejer and his younger partner Skarre are assigned to the case.

This is above all a psychological mystery, as Sejer and Skarre carefully poke and prod the small community, where everyone knows everyone else, in order to unravel the tale that led to the killing of a well-liked teenage girl. Although the townspeople have plenty of skeletons in their closets, the story never strays into cliché, as it might have under a less assured hand. Sejer is a placid and cunning detective of late middle age, living alone with his dog after being widowed (again, one senses that his personal life has been detailed in previous books). He bears a certain similarity to Det. Inspector Charlie Resnick, the protagonist of John Harvey's long-running Nottingham procedural series. Skarre works well as his younger, more informal partner, slightly treading on eggshells around his more experienced superior.

With no forensic evidence, no witnesses, and no apparent motive, there's little for them to go on. Thus, Sejer and Skarre spend the whole novel interviewing and reinterviewing everyone who knew the girl and might have seen something. As the tension builds, and various red herrings are dispensed with, Sejer grows convinced that the key to the murder lies in an abrupt change in the girl's behavior almost a year previously. This leads seamlessly to yet another layer within the story. Throughout, every character comes to life, and sometimes, the story shift to their perspective for several pages to add a richer depth to the unfolding investigation. Norway never really emerges as a distinct setting, it's a story that really could have been set in any small town in the first world, but it's an absorbing tale, which ends with a potentially unsettling coda.

PS. Danish television produced a four-hour miniseries from the book under the title "Se Deg Ikke Tilbake." With luck, it might be subtitled in English at some point...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great Scandinavian police novel, August 7, 2004

By 

Linda Oskam "dutch-traveller" (Amsterdam Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Look Back (Inspector Sejer Mysteries) (Hardcover)

One morning the 6 year old Ragnhild disappears. When ispector Sejer arrives at the house of the deparate mother, the girl soon returns, but the inspector gets another challenge: the dead body of another girl, the 15 year old Annie Holland, a beautiful, athletic and friendly girl that has gone through a dramatic character change in the last year. There are a whole bunch of suspects: her boyfriend Halvor, the ex-husband of her mother, a very vague neighbour, the handball trainer, a father and son who live a little bit further down the road and also a young man with Down syndrome. Sejer and his colleague Skarre have problems finding out who did it and especially the motive behind the murder.

A very readable book that gives a nice insight into the lives of the inhabitants of an ou of the way Norwegian village. A real Scandinavian police novel: not a horrendous lot of action, but very good psychologival description of the various characters.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic psychological suspense - European style, April 4, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Look Back (Inspector Sejer Mysteries) (Hardcover)

This fifth book in the Norwegian Inspector Konrad Sejer series, but the first to be published in the US, begins with the most chilling of scenes: 6-year-old Ragnhild accepting a ride from a strange, too eager man. Next we cut to her distraught, terrified mother being gently questioned by Sejer, who shares her dread.

But this scenario does not have the expected conclusion. The search party combing nearby Kollen mountain turn up the naked body of a local teenager, and Ragnhild is deposited on her doorstep by the lonely Downs-syndrome boy who had taken her to his home.

It's a small, close, valley community where everyone knows everyone else, though not as well as they think they do. The dead girl, Annie, had been bright, outgoing and well liked by everyone. Sure, she'd been subdued, even a bit withdrawn in the last few months, but her family and friends put it down to adolescence. Sejer thinks she had a secret.

As he and his assistant, young Jacob Skarre, begin to probe, they peel away layers of deception and self-deception, uncovering cracks and chasms under the tranquil surface. No surprise to Sejer, there are lots of secrets in this respectable, idyllic village, starting right in Annie's family. And there's the boyfriend - brutalized into passivity, he hardly seems her type.

Fossum is particularly adept at revealing character through details. A neighbor views Sejer's approach: "He assumed a strained expression, but then realized that this might make them suspicious; so he pulled himself together and tried a smile instead. Then he remembered that Annie was dead, and went back to the strained mask."

She steeps the story in its semi-rural, woods and mountain atmosphere, but just as telling are the characters' surroundings - a toy-strewn house or a muddy farmyard or a teenager's bedroom. Shifts in point of view heighten the psychological suspense and narrative depth. Sejer is a complex, thoughtful, empathetic character. Readers will hope to spend more time in his company.