Karin Fossum's 'Don't Look Back' kept me interested through the end. The book moves at a pace mirroring life itself. We are told about the disappearance of a little girl, having us assume that the book is going to be a denouement of the mystery of her disappearance. We are soon relieved of the worry about the little girl and plunged into another mystery surrounding the naked female dead body of an athletic teenager. The story is set in a small norwegian town, it could have been anywhere in the world because the writing doesn't give off a striking sense of place or culture, which I wish it did a little.The town is little enough for the residents to know each other. The well seasoned detective inspector Sejer and his much junior partner are tasked with solving the crime, we do not find out a whole lot about Sejer other than the fact that he lives alone with his German Shepherd, listens to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, in an apartment that he once shared with his Grace Kelly like beautiful wife who was consumed by disease. There seem to be no apparent motives to the crime in question. The evidences are mostly witness accounts that Sejer and his partner collect patiently by interviewing people directly linked to the victim like her family and her boyfriend. Other characters get involved and are interviewed in turn as plausible theories begin to evolve, eventually as in any crime novel we are made aware of what happened in reality. Karin Fossum's criminals in this book do not mete out violence out of malice, rather they are forced by circumstances or lapse into moments of irrationality when they do not realize the full import of the meaning of their actions or are just not themselves. Good story telling from a unique voice.
Read: 08/19/2011
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