Don't Look Back

A move from Sweden to Norway, with Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back, the first of her novels featuring Konrad Sejer to be published in English.

The story begins when a young girl disappears from a small town, Chief Inspector Sejer is called in, and the story seems set. But suddenly it shifts: the girl turns up unharmed after a few hours, but the search has uncovered the naked body of a teenage girl lying beside a lake. Who could have wanted to kill Annie, a quiet, standoffish girl that everyone seemed to like? Who could have had the strength to drown an athletic handball player? And why did Annie's behaviour change? Is it connected with her death? And what does her boyfriend know? Sejer and his partner Jacob Skarre have to tease out the answers from a pile of half-remembered car sightings, unreliable witnesses and suspicious locals.

Don't Look Back is a solid procedural lifted from the ordinary by the excellent character work, especially in the portrayal of the victim through the memories of the characters who knew her. Thus the impression we get shifts from an initial, simple idealised portrait of a young sports and baby obsessed teen with a happy home life and a doting boyfriend to a more complex portrait of an increasingly standoffish girl carrying some sort of private damage that seems to have triggered a generalised withdrawl from the world.

Ikea and baking

Quick morning visit to Ikea with mater: she in search of a large picture frame; me in search of scented tea lights to cover up the smell of drying plaster in my flat. We both found what we were looking for, but I managed to persuade my mother to defer her actual purchase of a 70x100cm frame until she had the car — a matter of self-interest because you can be sure I'd have been the one to do the actual carrying...

With that behind us, we returned home and entered into a frenzy of cake baking in an attempt to reduce my mother's reserves of rice flour. In the end we whipped up a batch of coffee and sweet potato muffins and another of orange and lemon and carrot cupcakes — both much tastier than they sound. After a gentle afternoon, a flying visit from my nephew and spaghetti for supper, the three of us settled down in front of the TV in the drawing room to allow my parents to initiate themselves in the delights of Fringe.