THE INDIAN BRIDE
by Karin Fossum & translated by Charlotte Barslund
Inspector Konrad Sejer closes the book on a love story that began with unlikely romance and ended with horrific violence.
No one ever thought Gunder Jomann would get married. But two weeks after he arrived in Mumbai, he returned to the Norwegian village of Elvestad to make arrangements for the arrival of Poona Bai Jomann, the waitress he’d courted and married. The autumnal romance of this naïve, sturdy farm-equipment salesman is so touching that fans of the series who expect tragedy will be quailing even before Gunder gets the shocking news that his sister Marie is lying comatose after a car crash. Dashing to the side of her hospital bed, he asks minicab driver Kalle Moe to pick up an Indian visitor—all right, his bride—at the airport and then sinks into ever deeper misery when Kalle can find no sign of her anywhere and the news media report the murder of a mystery woman who’s been savagely beaten to death less than a mile from Gunder’s home. In her own version of the two-part structure of Law & Order, Fossum first shows Sejer and Company (When the Devil Holds the Candle, 2006, etc.) hunting for a suspect, then focuses on the problems that arise once they have one in custody.
The most traditional of Sejer’s four translated cases leaves plenty of room for resonant ambiguities that are still proliferating as the net finally closes.