DON’T LOOK BACK

Murder strikes a placid Norwegian village in this deceptively understated novel, the first of veteran Fossum’s to appear in the US.

The quietly nasty surprises begin when nice young Raymond Låke, who has Down’s Syndrome, picks up little Ragnhild Album and takes her to his incapacitated father’s farm to visit the rabbits. As the police search for the girl, experienced readers will be holding their breath in pained anticipation, but all for naught; Ragnhild returns home none the worse for wear except for a tale about a teenaged schoolgirl she and Raymond saw lying up near Serpent Tarn. The girl was naked except for an anorak covering her still body. Medical evidence indicates that Annie Holland drowned without a single mark of violence, and that she would have died anyway within a few months from ovarian cancer that had spread to her liver. So why would someone have taken the trouble to kill her, undress her after death, and arrange her peacefully at the side of the lake? Inspector Konrad Sejer, a family man still mourning his late wife, proceeds methodically by questioning Annie’s neighbors and friends, but although no one has a harsh word for her, they all seem to have secrets of their own, from a traumatic family suicide to a long-buried conviction for rape. Which of those secrets was worth killing to preserve?

Top-drawer evidence that a practiced hand can still ring memorably creepy changes on the classic whodunit.