Synopses & Reviews
In the wake of Stieg Larssons best-selling novels, readers are discovering the rich trove of modern Scandinavian crime fiction. If youve devoured the Millennium trilogy and are looking for your next read, Karin Fossum and her bone-chillingly bleak psychological thrillers have won the admiration of the likes of Ruth Rendell and Colin Dexter (of Inspector Morse fame).
In Bad Intentions, the newest installment in the Inspector Sejer series since The Waters Edge in 2009, Konrad Sejer must face down his memories and fears as he struggles to determine why the corpses of troubled young men keep surfacing in local lakes.
The first victim, Jon Moreno, was getting better. His psychiatrist said so, and so did his new friend at the hospital, Molly Gram, with her little-girl-lost looks. He was racked by a mysterious guilt that had driven him to a nervous breakdown one year earlier. But when he drowns in Dead Water Lake, Sejer hesitates to call it a suicide.
Then another corpse is found in a lake, a Vietnamese immigrant. And Sejer begins to feel his age weigh on him. Does he still have the strength to pursue the elusive explanations for human evil?
Review
Praise for Karin Fossum and the Inspector Sejer series:
"Fossum crafts remarkably incisive psychological suspense: novels that carry the headlong momentum of thrillers and the acuity and weight of literary fiction." —The Washington Post
"The next Scandinavian literary superstar." —Chicago Tribune
"They never last very long, those anonymous joggers and dog-walkers whose only purpose in a crime story is to trip over the body in the woods. Unless, of course, they figure in a novel by Karin Fossum, who makes it her business—and the business of her uncommonly sensitive Norwegian detective, Inspector Konrad Sejer—to scrutinize in great depth and detail every person touched by a murder." —The New York Times Book Review
"I always eagerly await a new novel from Karin Fossum." —Ruth Rendell
"One thing...that immediately sets Fossum's fine mystery apart from other, merely sensational variations on this story line is its self-consciousness…Like the well-ripened queens of psychological suspense to whom she is inevitably compared—Ruth Rendell and PD James—the younger Fossum charts this excursion into the unthinkable with poetic restraint." —The Washington Post
"A truly great writer and explorer of the human mind." —Jo Nesbo
"By stripping away the usual police procedurals, Fossum suffuses her fiction with something closer to the unsparing vision of her great predecessor, Knut Hamsun." —The Independent
"Sejer is a beautifully created character, a thoughtful, lonely man with great empathy." —Publishers Weekly
"Tremendous suspense…A treasure for fans." —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Synopsis
Inspector Sejer returns in this expertly crafted mystery about troubled teenagers—and two tragic deaths.
Synopsis
In the first novel in the Sejer series, Eva and her young daughter Emma are walking by the river when Emma spots something floating in the water. It's the body of a man, and what's more, a man Eva recognizes. Sejer and Skarre piece together the stories behind two unsolved murders . . . does it all lead back to Eva?
Synopsis
The original Inspector Sejer mystery available for the first time in English. Eva Magnus is a struggling artist and the divorced mother of a seven-year-old child, Emma. One afternoon she and Emma are walking by the river when an unknown man's body floats to the surface of the icy water. She tells her daughter to wait patiently while she calls the police, but when she reaches the phone box Eva dials another number altogether.
When the police discover the body, it doesn't take long for Inspector Sejer and his team to determine that the man, Egil, died in a violent attack. But Egil has been missing for months and the trail to his killer has gone cold. It's as puzzling as another unsolved case on Sejer's desk: the murder of a prostitute who was found dead just three days before Egil went missing.
Sejer sets to work piecing together the fragments of these two impossible cases; soon enough he realizes that they might not be as separate as they had seemed. Gripping and thought-provoking, Eva's Eye is Karin Fossum's first novel featuring the iconic Inspector Sejer.
Synopsis
The first Inspector Sejer novel by Norway's Queen of Crime, Karin Fossum
Synopsis
For the first time, Fossum shows her hand-- a novel about an author whose latest creation is the melancholy tale of a complacent man whose life is ripped apart by a young drug addict.
Synopsis
Awoman wakes up in the middle of the night. A strange man is in her bedroom. She lies there in silence, paralyzed with fear.The woman is an author and the man one of her characters, one in a long line that waits in her driveway for the time when shell tell their stories. He is so desperate that he has resorted to breaking into her house and demanding that she begin. He, the author decides, is named Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single,works in a gallery. He lives a quiet, orderly life and likes it that wayno demands, no unpleasantness. Until one icy winter day when a young drug addict, skinny and fragile, walks into the gallery. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. And then one day she appears on his doorstep. Broken is an unconventional, subtle, and disturbing mystery from a master of the form.
Synopsis
“No one can thoroughly chill the blood the way Karin Fossum can.” —Los Angeles Times Eva Magnus and her daughter are out walking by the river when a man’s body floats to the water’s surface. Eva goes to call the police, but when she reaches the phone, she dials another number altogether.
The police find the body anyway. Inspector Sejer and his team quickly determine that the man, Egil, died in a violent attack. But Egil has been missing for months and the trail to his killer is cold. It’s as puzzling as another unsolved case on Sejer’s desk: the murder of a prostitute, found dead just before Egil went missing. Sejer sets to work piecing together these two impossible cases; it's not long before he realizes that they aren’t as separate as they previously seemed.
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 Norway.