The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum

The Drowned Boy is the eleventh in Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer series.

Konrad Sejer is a fantastic character, a top detective I really enjoyed spending eleven novels with. Throughout these psychological mysteries, the writing has been excellent and I recommend the series.

While husband Nicolai was tinkering in the basement, Carmen left her sixteen-month old son alone, just for a minute. Just starting to walk, he quickly went outside to the backyard lake and fell off the jetty. When they found him moments later, he was dead.

Inspector Sejer feels Carmen is not behaving properly - she displays some nuances he can't explain that make him think twice - but grief is hard to define and different for everyone. The incident splits the family and inlaws apart as Nicolai descends into sadness and Carmen clears out his belongings and wants to start over with another child.

There are no clues towards foul play, no signs it was anything but an accident, but Sejer and his assistant Skarre still have their doubts. In this novel, Sejer plays a larger role personally, and finally looks into the cause of the dizzy spells he has experienced for the past few books. It is less a mystery than the slow disintegration of a marriage after a tragedy, and just as I was about to write it off as such - you can't solve every case, Sejer - Fossum delivers a knockout in last few lines that left me reeling.

Fossum is a truly great explorer of the human mind, with delicacy and insight she slowly exposes her characters to the reader. She is an exceptional writer to maintain this over the series. Konrad Sejer quite tall, and has a sensitive but astute technique. The Sejer character appears in the film version of Eva's Eye, but I have always pictured him as the actor Stellan Skarsgard.

The oddity: since Don't Look Back I've been in his apartment on the thirteenth floor (the top floor means he enjoys an unobstructed view) and he always walks up the stairs, thinking it odd when Skarre does not. However, in The Drowned Boy she says directly and a few times that he lives on the twelfth floor and that's not right. I know his apartment - with the outdated tiles in the bathroom he has been going to replace for ten novels, the CD rack of only female artists, the picture he contemplates of his deceased wife Elise. I was with him as his dog Kohlberg grew old and passed away, and met his new dog Frank Robert. It must be a publishing adjustment for the US market, because I've been there many times and had to walk the stairs with him. He lives on the thirteenth floor.

This is a top notch series I can highly recommend.

I still feel so sad for the fate of Poona in The Indian Bride, so much so that I prefer to think of her and Gundar living happily together. Fossum creates powerful characters that still live with me.

My other reviews for Karin Fossum:

I Can See In The Dark

The Whisperer (Inspector Sejer #13)

Hellfire (Inspector Sejer #12)

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)

He Who Fears The Wolf (Inspector Sejer #3)