Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum

Don't Look Back is the second Inspector Sejer novel from Karin Fossum, and the winner of the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel. It was her first to be translated into English, and is often seen as the start of the Sejer series. It's one of the best of hers I have read - and one of the best all around crime novels I have ever read. Really fascinating and satisfying in every way.

In a small village, a six year old girl goes missing. As they search, they find another woman - peacefully lying naked with her clothes piled beside her, unmarked and with no sign of struggle, fingerprints or clues - on the shore of a nearby lake. Someone has even covered her in a jacket. Just seventeen, she has babysat for the whole neighbourhood and was well known. Inspectors Sejer and Skarre begin to go door to door, opening each of the 20 or so houses like cans of worms. Buried family histories are brought to light, and it seems almost everyone had a motive and opportunity to have killed her.

This is a complete crime novel, as Inspector Sejer explains his methods to the younger Inspector Skarre, in turn explaining each step to us. The procedure is painstaking and each bit of evidence is assessed. House by house, all the secrets that make up the village, and all the hidden secrets people collect are about to come to light. As shown by the way the body is presented, this isn't gruesome of violent, but intensely psychological, and again, the writing is fantastic. Fossum has a unique way of showing the good and bad in everyone with an unbiased eye. We learn a lot more about Konrad Sejer and what drives him on, and this can be seen as the first novel starring him as the focus. If you want to try an Inspector Sejer novel, this is it.

I don't know what they are thinking with the covers. It would be nice if it had something to do with the novel inside. This absolutely does not. Again with the generic woman in a red coat walking away. It's getting so they use the same image over again, like the same woman is trapped in all these different novels...

Can't recommend it enough. Don't Look Back has just the right balance of what you are looking for in a crime novel. It's a great mystery by a writer raising the crime genre into literature.

My other reviews for Karin Fossum:

I Can See In The Dark

The Whisperer (Inspector Sejer #13)

Hellfire (Inspector Sejer #12)

The Drowned Boy (Inspector Sejer #11)

The Caller (Inspector Sejer #10)

Bad Intentions (Inspector Sejer #9)

The Water's Edge (Inspector Sejer #8)

The Murder of Harriet Krohn (Inspector Sejer #7)

Black Seconds (Inspector Sejer #6)

The Indian Bride (Inspector Sejer #5)

When The Devil Holds The Candle (Inspector Sejer #4)