Product Description

Beneath the imposing Kollen Mountain lies a small village where the children run in and out of one another's houses and play unafraid in the streets. But the sleepy village is like a pond through which not enough water runs - beneath the surface it is beginning to stagnate. When a naked body is found by the lake at the top of the mountain, its seeming tranquillity is disturbed forever. Enter Inspector Sejer, a tough, no-nonsense policeman whose own life is tinged by sadness. As the suspense builds, and the list of suspects grows, Sejer's determination to discover the truth leads him to peel away layer upon layer of distrust and lies in this tiny community where apparently normal family ties hide dark secrets. Critically acclaimed across Europe, Karin Fossum's novels evoke a world that is terrifyingly familiar. Don't Look back introduces the tough, ethical Inspector Sejer to British readers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13226 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-03
• Original language: Norwegian
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'[From] Norway's Queen of crime...an engaging...atmospheric thriller' Daily Mail

From the Back Cover
Don't Look Back shows just how well Fossum deserves her continental fame' Sunday Times

At the foot of the Kollen mountain lies a small village where the children play unafraid in the streets. But the tranquillity is about to be irrecoverably shattered by a most sinister crime when a young woman's naked body is found lying by the lake.
Inspector Sejer - smart, tough and enigmatic - is called in to investigate. Only he can uncover the dark secrets of this quiet community, hidden by deep family ties...
'Ends with such a blow to the stomach that most readers will wish they had failed to understand the appalling outcome to this apparently routine investigation' Scotsman

About the Author
Karin Fossum was born in 1954, and made her literary debut in Norway with a collection of poetry in 1974. She has since published another volume of poetry, two collections of short stories and one non-crime novel. Her five crime novels featuring Konrad Sejer have been published in sixteen languages. She lives in Oslo.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Norwegian Procedural -- #5 in the series
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...

Classy crime thriller
Inspector Sejer is an engaging and thoughtful inspector, the 'suspects' and other characters are carefully drawn and recognisable - the sense of community in this novel is striking. This tale takes place in the real world and is absorbing and chilling because of it. A grown up detective story. I can't wait for Karin Fossum's other novels to be translated - I'm not usually a detective story reader but Elizabeth George and Inspector Lynley have changed that, and I would say Fossum and Sejer are close rivals. Fossum's novel is more than murder-mystery, it is a work of 'proper' fiction, and deserves the awards it has won. Highly enjoyable.

Compact, deft Scandinavian crime novel
I'm a big fan of Henning Mankell's Swedish crime novels, but when I'd read them all (or at least all the ones that have been translated) I started to look around for more Scandinavian crime fiction.
I couldn't have moved on to a better substitute for Mankell.
Karin Fossum's style is not dissimilar to Mankell's, and I suspect that if you like one you'll like the other.
There are differences though. Fossum doesn't make the landscape and climate part of the action like Mankell does. Apart from the occasional place name, there's not much to tell you that you're in Norway, though of course the names of the characters are exotic and interesting.
I think Fossum is better at characterization: she deftly brings out all of her characters where Mankell concentrates on his central character almost at the expense of the others. I was particularly impressed by the way subtle, real details bring the characters to life. There is some very clever, but not showy writing in this novel.
You'll probably have to like "police procedurals" to really enjoy this. But it's not dour, not dull. There are moments of real tension and revelation; you'll find you are easily persuaded to turn to the next page and the next chapter.
I look forward to reading more of Karin Fossum's novels.