The Water's Edge

Following the English publication order, I've reached Karin Fossum's The Water's Edge which is actually preceded by Black Seconds in original Norwegian series. Not that it makes much difference. There are a few minor changes in the main characters' circumstances — Sejer has a new dog, a replacement for Kollberg who was clearly ailing at the end of Calling Out for You — but there's nothing significant enough to cause problems.

The book opens when an unhappily married couple stumble across the dead body of a child in the woods. The police, led by Konrad Sejer and Jacob Skarre, quickly begin trawling local paedophiles in the hope that one of them will match a description of a man seen fleeing the scene. But as just as the investigation starts to build up some momentum, a second child vanishes and the police find themselves under further pressure.

Although the abductions frame the narrative, the majority of the book is spent investigating the impact of the crime on the people who come into contact with it. The couple who discover the first body, Kristine and Reinhardt Fris, deal with it in very different ways: Reinhardt becomes disturbingly obsessed with the crime, taking photos of the body with his cell phone, collecting newspaper cuttings, and showing up at the victim's funeral; Kristine, in contrast, comes to realise that her life is empty and her marriage is a shell that she needs to escape from, albeit on her own terms. The mothers of the two victims are also shown responding to their losses in different ways: the first being completely devastated by the loss of the most significant person in her life, while the second is portrayed by local gossip as being more interested in her (rather dubious) boyfriend than her son. Even the minor characters are shown to suffer: the boys' fellow pupils at school; the gay teacher and his boyfriend who finds themselves guilty by association.