Title: The Copper Bracelet

Authors: (In order of chapter written) Jeffery Deaver, Gayle Lynds, David Hewson, Jim Fusilli, John Gilstrap, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, David Corbett, Linda Barnes, Jenny Siler, David Liss, P.J. Parrish, Brett Battles, Lee Child, Jon Land, James Phelan

Narrator: Alfred Molina

Publisher: Audible Inc and International Thriller Writers Inc [2009]

Length: 8hrs 38 minutes

Genre: Thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A true edge of your seat thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This book features the same band of war-criminal hunting ‘Volunteers’ who first appeared in The Chopin Manuscript, which, like this one, featured chapters written by different thriller writers. In the opening sequence Harold Middleton, leader of the Volunteers, and key members of his crew are nearly the victims of a hired assassin but, of course, they turn the tables and instead begin to learn that the copper bracelet which the assassin was wearing is far more than a piece of jewellery. The team must track down someone known as The Scorpion and prevent the world exploding into a new world war when a conflict between India and Pakistan is orchestrated by some nefarious types.

If Frederick Forsythe had written a season of 24 it would, I imagine, have turned out a bit like this book. It’s full of global politics, double-crossing assassins and the implausible high-tech gadgetry that a decent thriller must have. But, probably because each one is written by a different author all trying to leave their mark, the chapters each have their own story arc and cliff-hanger endings so it’s even more action packed than an average thriller. There are undoubtedly more twists and turns in the overall plot than would be the case if the story was written by a single author but it holds together well and there are surprisingly few loose ends left over. It’s not a particularly thought-provoking story but it didn’t lose my attention once.

As tends to be the way with thrillers the characters aren’t particularly well-developed, partly because they’re busy leaping out of the way of thermobaric bombs and partly because there are so darned many of them (that’s probably another side-effect of the multiple authorship). However the notion of a group of people tracking down the world’s war criminals is more clearly defined in this book and some of them were quite engaging in their brief appearances.

As he did with the first book Alfred Molina narrates brilliantly, taking the numerous characters of multiple nationalities in his stride. As someone who is a real fan of audio books I am pleased to see this audio only experiment continue. It’s quite clear the authors have fun collaborating as a change from their solo pursuits and I can’t imagine too many listeners wouldn’t experience a similar sense of fun with this classic roller-coaster of a thriller.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As far as I can tell there are no plans for the book to be available in print but a version for the kindle is due in January 2010.

I reviewed The Chopin Manuscript, the first book in this audio-only series, earlier this year

Title: Publish or Perish

Author: Margot Kinberg

Publisher: Eloquent Books [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-60693-747-1

Length: 211 pages

Genre: Amateur sleuth/police procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A light and delightful mystery

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Nick Merrill is a graduate student at Tilton University where he is also a tutor and software developer. He’s popular with his students, is juggling sexual relationships with two women and looks like being successful in both an academic and commercial sense with his new software. Unfortunately for Nick, Tilton University is a hotbed of insecure, ruthless and desperate people, any of whom could have it in for him. His two love interests find out about each other, his fellow graduate student is incensed when Nick receives an award she believes is due to her and his academic mentor might just be taking credit for Nick’s hard work in a last-ditch effort to obtain tenured status.

I have read Margot Kinberg’s excellent blog for a while now and one of the things that is crystal clear is that she is a fan of classic crime fiction, in particular the work of Agatha Christie. It probably won’t come as any surprise then that this book reminded me in some ways of those great Christie tales in which readers are introduced to the victim and all the potential suspects before a murder takes place. It didn’t really strike me until I re-read a couple of Christie novels this year that this particular style of introducing people doesn’t happen much anymore but when done well, as it is here, it’s an excellent way to draw readers quickly into the story because you ‘know’ the victim and are invested in finding out which of these people you’ve met is a killer. In procedurals and even in most ‘cosy’ mysteries someone stumbles across the body of an unknown person and only meets the suspects after the murder has occurred which means you never see the characters behaving ‘normally’. Introducing them all before the death gives a different, more intimate, perspective that I find I really enjoy.

There’s a full cast of interesting characters here including Joel Williams who is a former policeman turned Professor at the University whose classes are observed by Nick as part of his work as a research assistant. When there is a murder, and then another one, Williams uses his contacts at the police station to learn what’s happening with the investigation and uses his own skills and access to University personnel and students to assist the police with the case. Even some of his students get in on the act in a quite delightful thread although they soon decide that murder investigation is a little more dangerous than what they’ve seen on TV.

As Kinberg is herself an Associate Professor at an American University I can only presume that she has depicted the environment well which means it must be a scary place to work! It reminded me of those small town mysteries I enjoy so much where all the characters are connected in some way and seemingly all have at least one secret the want kept hidden. I would recommend the book to anyone who wants a light, well-written mystery without a lot of blood and violence and lots of good old-fashioned plot threads to unravel.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Full Disclosure: I won a copy of this book in a ‘name a character’ competition at the author’s website

Publish or Perish has also been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise, Petrona and DJ’s Krimiblog

This week I am the featured blogger for Cathy from Kittling Books‘ Scene of the Blog meme in which Cathy asks book bloggers from all over the blogosphere to reveal where they do their blogging. So if you want to see where Reactions to Reading is written head on over to Cathy’s website and take a look. Funnily enough I took the photos many months apart but both times my little town was experiencing extreme heat!

Cathy is even busier than normal this week because she works in retail in the US so I am surprised she can find time to breathe let alone blog. Although I live in Australia I have relatives in the US and I have experienced the chaos of Black Friday a couple of times (it’s similar to the post-Christmas sales we have here in Oz but with the madness ramped up another few notches). So I am particularly grateful to Cathy for all the work she does (and all the authors she’s introduced me to) and for adding me to the Scene of the Blog roll call. “Meeting” friendly and knowledgeable bloggers like Cathy has been an unexpected but wonderful side effect of starting my own blog.

So go have a look at where I blog and say Happy Thanksgiving to Cathy (who’ll probably be run off her poor feet before the week is over).

My contribution this week to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is to discuss a book I read just before starting this blog last year: Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick. It’s a story about Portland detective Archie Sheridan who tracked one of America’s most gruesome serial killers for ten years. Until she caught him. Gretchen Lowell kidnapped Archie and tortured him for days before giving herself up and allowing him to receive medical treatment. When the book opens it’s two years after these events and Archie, who has been on medical leave for the whole time, is asked to go back to work to head up a new task force tracking a new serial killer. At the same time he agrees to be the subject of a series of feature articles in one of the city’s leading newspapers.

This was one of those reading experiences that I got completely engrossed with. The parallel unravelling of the current case, the events surrounding Archie’s kidnap and his continuing interactions with Lowell is done in a very tantalising way. If you’ve ever done a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the picture is supposed to be you’ll have an idea of how this is put together. Each chapter you get a glimpse of some part of the whole story but then you’re diverted to a new strand or twist before you get too comfortable with the idea that you know what’s going on. I found it genuinely suspenseful. There were a couple of credibility-stretching plot points, such as the notion that any Police Department would allow someone who’d been through what Archie had been through to return to active duty without a plethora of drug tests, psych tests and..oh…I don’t know…a lobotomy but this is a minor criticism of an otherwise excellent plot.

The characters are also the kind that stick with you. Archie is about as tortured a soul as you could meet on the pages of a book and Lowell is evil incarnate. While it’s interesting to see a female serial killer depicted it’s even more interesting to see a male character as the kind of victim that Archie is. Cain has been very subtle in her depiction of this kind of role reversal which has a far greater impact than a more overt approach would have had. In fact all the characters, even those who appear only briefly such as the FBI profiler are clearly depicted and seem like very real, believable people.

The big question is…can I recommend this book? Not without telling you one more thing. It is violent. Gruesomely, descriptively, gratuitously violent. Frankly it’s one of the books I always think about when people talk about crime fiction being too violent. And although I did enjoy it I’ve not picked up the sequel and have no intention of doing so. With Heartsick I didn’t know what to expect and by the time I realised just how bloody the book was I had been hooked by the story and the people but I wouldn’t be able to start a second book with the same mindset.

Title: Too Close to Home

Author: Linwood Barclay

Publisher: Orion Books [2009]

ISBN: 978-1-4091-0209-0

Length: 466 pages

Genre: Thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 2.5/5

One-liner: A bit superficial and predictable for me but those who like plot twists and turns should enjoy it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Teenager Derek Cutter has a plan. He’ll hide in his next door neighbour and best friend Adam Langley’s house when Adam and his parents go on holidays. Then Derek will have a venue for hooking up with his girlfriend Penny. Things go awry when the Langley family returns home only an hour after leaving but while Derek is trying to work out how to sneak out without being discovered the entire Langley family is killed by intruders. The next morning Derek’s parents, Jim and Ellen, are shocked to learn of their neighbours’ fate and Derek says nothing about what he saw or heard the previous night. However, Jim Cutter learns some things that make him wonder if the Langley family were killed mistakenly.

I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye earlier this year and what grabbed me most were the thoughtful depictions of a couple’s individual and joint struggles in a time of crisis for their family. In Too Close to Home the characters were not nearly as engaging. Jim Cutter, whose point of view occupies most of the book, is superficial and he didn’t seem to react authentically to much of what was going on in his life. His response to people he didn’t like (punching them) was juvenile and became dull (he did it four times that I can recall) and overall I was bored by him. I never bought Ellen’s character at all but I can’t really say why without giving away spoilers but I think she waited far too long in terms of the internal logic of the story to share her secret with her husband. The only person who I really thought was depicted well was their teenage son Derek but he wasn’t enough of a pivotal role to hold the book together for me.

I also struggled to maintain interest in the plot. It seemed to take forever to get going and, aside from a few minor surprises, was quite predictable. The killer was obvious to me at the moment of their introduction and, even though it had three twists too many, the end of the convoluted plagiarism thread was easy to forecast. There seemed to me to be too many ideas jammed into this one story and so nothing really got explored terribly deeply and the fact that one thread was a very (very) long and obvious red herring didn’t really work.

The book is not terrible. But, as is the way of things, if something grabs my heart in some way I forgive its flaws and when something doesn’t grab me I do admit to becoming overly picky. For tangible and intangible reasons this book just didn’t grab me and so I’ve undoubtedly gotten hot under the collar about things that don’t really matter. However if you haven’t tried Linwood Barclay yet I’d recommend No Time For Goodbye.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I reviewed Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye in February this year

Other, far more positive, reviews of Too Close to Home can be found at Material Witness (who thinks it’s a better book than No Time for Goodbye), Peeking Between the Pages and A Bookworm’s World

Title: Sworn to Silence

Author: Linda Castillo

Narrator: Kathleen McInerney

Publisher: MacMillan Audio [2009]

ISBN: n/a (downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 11hrs 43mins

Genre: Police Procedural (small town)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: Engaging characters in an interesting setting but I could do without the violence .

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

One night in the middle of winter a body is discovered in the snow in a small town of Painters Mill, Ohio. The woman appears to have been brutally murdered in a way that reminds everyone of a series of murders which took place in the area 16 years previously. The one person who doesn’t believe the same killer, named the Slaughterhouse Killer at the time, is active again is the town’s Police Chief Kate Burkholder. She shares a secret with two other people about that previous string of murders which makes her almost positive it’s a different killer. Accordingly she points the current investigation in other directions but the town’s other officials bring in outside help to ensure that the investigation focuses on any links to the Slaughterhouse Killer case.

The most engaging aspect of this book for me is the character of Kate Burkholder and the aspects of town life that are depicted through her. The area is home to an Amish community, of which Kate was a member until she was 18, and there is some unrest between the other townspeople and the Amish. Although Kate is no longer Amish her brother and sister are still in the community and overall she respects the Amish community even though she chose not to join it. She is a focal point for relationships between the town’s two divergent cultures and I am a sucker for stories which feature religions different to the one I was brought up with. Kate also struggles for much of the book with the knowledge that her secret may be forcing her to take actions which are not in the best interests of solving the case and I thought this complex issue was portrayed very realistically.

Overall the story was well paced: not screaming along at thriller pace but nor did it plod. There were several minor climax points before the ending and I didn’t lose my attention once. As well as being intrigued by Kate, my interest was held by an array of minor characters, mainly working in the police station. The seeds of a series were most obvious with this introduction of an engaging cast although I can’t envisage endless storylines in this setting.

I did struggle with other parts of the book. I found the burgeoning relationship between Kate and one of the external investigators brought in to help, John Tomasetti, too predictable and a bit soppy. However this probably won’t bother most readers who can’t be as unromantic as me. There were also a few plot points I found stretching my credibility metre. At one point for example someone is framed as the perpetrator of the murders and I just could not buy that everyone but Kate was so gullible as to accept the most unlikely killer. However my real issue was with the overly graphic depictions of the violence visited upon the victims of the killer (because of course one body is never enough). It really didn’t add anything to the story to have several paragraphs of bodily mutilations described for each victim and, rarely for me, I wished I was reading rather than listening so I could skip those bits.

Sworn to Silence offers a really solid story, some engaging characters and an interesting setting (although perhaps I got extra enjoyment because each mention of the wintry snow made me forget, momentarily, our unseasonal heatwave). However I’d like to see the next book avoid the overly gruesome violence.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The book is very well narrated by Katherine McInerney and the audible version that I bought has a nice bonus in the form of an interview with the author. It’s an interview by the publisher so it’s not exactly hard-hitting but does provide an opportunity for Castillo to talk about her research methodologies (she has completed two lots of civilian police training among many other activities) and she gives some good background to the book. Unfortunately she wasn’t asked about the value of the detailed and gruesome depictions of the violent mutilations of the victims and whether or not she thought the book could have been just as good without them.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This book has also been reviewed at Petrona (where Maxine shared my concerns about the violence but not about the romance), Lesa’s Book Critiques, Book Addiction and Whimpulsive

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme, hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is gathering new participants each week and is a great source of recommendations about a wide variety of crime fiction. Do check out letters A, B, C, D, E and F if you haven’t already done so.

I’m not nearly as well versed in classic crime fiction as other participants of this meme but I have read my share of the older stuff so this week I thought I’d talk about one of my favourite ‘golden age’ characters: Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe who appeared in more than 70 novels and stories. Published in 1962 Gambit is one of the later books of the series (which started in 1934) and so is less dated than the earlier works. As always, the book is amusingly narrated by Wolfe’s able assistant Archie Goodwin. In it Paul Jerin is a chess master simultaneously playing 12 games (blindfolded) at a private club (the Gambit Club) when he dies of poisoning via his hot chocolate. Sally Blount, who knew Jerin, engages Wolfe, a private detective, to prove that her father, Matthew, is innocent of Jerin’s murder which he has been arrested for.

In our house when I was growing up most of my cultural references were English. What little TV we watched was English (all those dreadful 70’s sitcoms like Love thy Neighbour that made me cringe even then), the magazines my mother got her recipes and knitting patterns from were English and the books we borrowed from the library were, for the most part, English (I started my mystery reading with Enid Blyton and moved to Agatha Christie and Dick Francis). When I chanced upon a Rex Stout novel with its dapper hero who lived in a lavish house in mysterious (to me) New York I was therefore intrigued.  The fact that he solved almost all of his cases without ever leaving the house was icing on the cake (perhaps even then I was anti-social) and I also liked the fact he was a larger than life character in so many ways. In the opening of Gambit for example Wolfe is burning the pages of Webster’s New International Dictionary because, among other crimes, it states that the words imply and infer are interchangeable. I adore that kind of eccentricity in fictional characters. Actually I adore that kind of eccentricity in real people just as much.

I haven’t read a Nero Wolfe book for many years and I wondered if I would still get the same enjoyment out of them now that I did as a teenager. However when I browsed a copy of Gambit at the library to reacquaint myself with the story before writing this post I found myself smiling and chuckling at the same things I used to like. I no longer have the same need to prove how different I am from the rest of my family (by reading American books instead of English ones) and think I’d tire more quickly now of Wolfe’s attitude to women (although I don’t think he’s the misogynist some people claim, I just think he’s incredibly socially awkward). However, the books do provide wonderfully complicated puzzles and they are genuinely funny. Also I think this series offers one of the first real partnerships in crime fiction as Archie Goodwin is a far more an equal partner to Wolfe than say Watson was to Holmes. Goodwin as a character is equally as well rounded as Wolfe and he is heavily involved in the investigations, in fact it’s often his contacts such as crime bean reporter Lon Cohen, who provide vital information, and he is far more than a simple foil to demonstrate Wolfe’s superiority.

I don’t seem to see Stout’s work discussed as much as that of Christie, Marsh and others but he’s hugely popular still. At the 2000 Bouchercon the Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century at the same time. Visit The Wolfe Pack for extensive information about Stout and his best known creations Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Title: A Beautiful Place to Die

Author: Malla Nunn

Publisher: Pan MacMillan [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-405-03877-5

Length: 397 pages

Genre: Historical crime fiction / police procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: A stunningly confronting yet beautiful book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In the early 1950’s in the small South African town of Jacob’s Rest the police captain, Willem Pretorius, is found brutally murdered. When Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate he struggles against the backdrop of the newly instituted racial segregation laws (apartheid) . Pretorius’ Afrikaner family want quick vengeance: they distrust Cooper who is English and assume it is the black community or coloureds who have killed their patriarch. At the same time the Security Police descend on the town and work on the theory that Pretorius was killed by a communist or other political activist and they soon sideline Cooper from their investigation.

Of the many striking things about this book the one that is likely to stay with me longest is the unflichingly honest picture it paints of the time and place in which it is set. So many engrossing details of both the political and physical setting are provided that I easily felt myself in the town of Jacob’s Rest with its roads for whites and its kaffir paths and its segregated Sunday church services with potluck dinners. I felt awkward and angry as the realities of the segregation laws were demonstrated through the story playing out but despite my discomfort I found myself unwilling to leave the place even for a moment and read the entire book in a single sitting.

On top of the setting the book has stunning characters. Cooper struggles with nightmares from his days in the trenches during the war and regularly argues with the voice of his former Sergeant Major. Although white he is distrusted by the powerful Afrikaners but also finds it hard to be accepted by the myriad second class citizens although, ultimately, it is a myriad collection of these people, including captain Pretorius’ Zulu ‘brother’ Constable Samuel Shabalala, who help him with his investigation. But it’s not only the sympathetic characters who are brilliantly depicted: Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Special Branch is one of the most loathsome men you’ll find in crime fiction, all the more so because he’s entirely believable.

Of course none of this would be worth much if the book didn’t also tell a gripping story and there’s a real old-fashioned whodunnit here. In trying to uncover who killed Willem Pretorius Cooper uncovers a series of crimes that have been left unsolved because the victims weren’t white and also learns of Pretorius’ own moral lapses. He races to find what these events may have had to do with Pretorius’ death as he tries to salvage his own career from being ruined by the Special Branch.

This is yet another book that has everything I look for in my crime fiction and had me alternating between indignant mutterings under my breath, heart-in-my-mouth fear and more than a few tears.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Beautiful Place to Die has been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction,  Reviewing the Evidence and Crime Down Under

Malla Nunn was born ins Swaziland but lives in Australia so we’re claiming her as ours. This interview with her on Radio National’s Book Show last December prompted me to go out and buy the book (and it only took me 11 months to rescue it from the TBR pile).

I have been an awfully bad Weekly Geeker this year but as someone who is subscribed to about 40 podcasts (I was reviewing them long before I was reviewing books) I felt I should have something to say about this week’s topic which is to provide links to or reviews of podcasts, especially book related ones.

All but one of my favourite book podcasts are all radio shows that I wouldn’t be able to listen to if it weren’t for the magic of podcasting:

• Radio National in Australia produces The Book Show every weekday and the format is wide-ranging. Some days the entire show will feature an interview with a single author while at other times there will be multiple books discussed. There are also book readings and interesting segments like Off The Shelf where famous Australians talk about their favourite books.
• The BBC Five Live Books Podcast is a weekly show hosted by Simon Mayo which airs on Thursday afternoons UK time and is released via podcast later the same day. The format involves having the authors of two new release books on the show plus 2-3 reviewers who have read the book and there is a 10-15 minute discussion about each book which includes some plot synopsis and review comments.  The show discusses a wide variety of books including from literary fiction to most of the popular genres (though I’ve never heard them discuss a horror book).
• The BBC is also responsible for the World Book Club which is aired once a month (except during the English summer) and involves an interview with a single author about a single one of their books (normally their first). It’s normally recorded with a live audience who can ask questions and it’s also possible to email questions prior to the show or ask by telephone during the show. These shows tend to be with authors of literary rather than genre fiction although several crime fiction authors, including Sara Paretsky and Patricia Cornwell, have appeared in the past.
• Not entirely book related (and not a radio show) but an excellent podcast for those who write is Grammar Girl (or to give it its full name Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing). Even if you’re not a grammar junky you’ll get something from the show which is short, informative and well produced. Host Mignon Fogarty is American but always includes tips for users of both British and American English where there are significant differences.

The rest of my podcast aggregator is filled with non-book related podcasts on subjects like technology, politics, news, movies, TV and music. Among my favourites are

• Coverville which is a music podcast release 2-3 times per week and plays cover songs. Most episodes have some kind of theme, for example covers of one artist or band’s songs, and there are listener request shows too. I would never have thought there’d be enough cover songs to keep me interested for long but the show has been running for over 600 episodes now and it’s consistently introducing me to new artists and interesting music. Last week’s Sesame Street Cover songs episode (to celebrate the 40th birthday of the famous TV show) was a treat.
• Car Pool which is a video podcast hosted by Robert Llewellyn (yes the one who played Kryten on Red Dwarf). Each week he does an interview in his car of someone interesting. Guests can be film or TV stars, comedians, technology experts and, increasingly, scientists and environmentalists. Past guests have included Jo Brand, Stephen Fry, Chelsea Sexton and a swag of others. I always learn something and/or laugh out loud.
• The Daily Giz Wiz is a tech gadget show released each weekday. It’s among the 20 or so shows hosted by Leo Laporte (who runs an internet-based broadcast network focused on technology) and Dick DeBartolo and each day they highlight and review a gadget. I don’t really listen for the tech-y stuff (although I have found some great gadgets via the show) because the show is plain funny. DeBartolo writes for Mad Magazine and has written for TV game shows and comedy shows and he brings the quirky sense of humour to the show.

Hopefully there’s something among all that for you to check out and I look forward to seeing what other podcasts fellow Weekly Geekers have to share.

Title: Don’t Look Back [the second Inspector Sejer novel although the first in the series available in English]

Author: Karin Fossum [Translated by Felicity David]

Publisher: Harcourt Books [2002]

ISBN: 978-0-015-603136-3

Length: 295 pages

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: Thoughtful, captivating and very, very readable.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In a small Norwegian village the near-naked body of a teenage girl is found at the lake. Once they identify her as Annie Holland Inspector Konrad Sejer and Officer Jacob Skarre learn that everyone liked the athletic young girl who babysat for most of the village’s children although many people mention the change in her behaviour some months before her death. Having precious little in the way of evidence they have to determine whether it was just a normal part of growing up or whether there an event in her life that may have had something to do with her death.

I’ve had this book in my TBR pile for over a year and it may have continued to languish there among all the others but for this week’s crime fiction alphabet post by Maxine at Petrona. What struck me particularly was a quote from Fossum about being interested in “‘the good guy who does something evil’ rather than the bogeyman.” Although I have read my share of rampaging serial killer books I generally don’t find them as satisfying as those that explore the circumstances and motivations behind ordinary people reaching some kind of breaking point and so was keen to get stuck into the first Inspector Sejer book translated into English.

I knew absolutely nothing about the story when I started reading (I deliberately didn’t look at the blurb) and was hooked by the twist in the opening. As the book started I thought it was going to be about one sort of crime and just as I geared myself up for that it turned into something completely different. From then on the story was pieced together like an intricate jigsaw with many pieces needing to be turned this way and that before slotting into place to help reveal the whole picture. Without car chases or guns blazing the story managed to be suspense-filled and captivating from beginning to end as Sejer and Skarre teased out important details about village life from its inhabitants

Fossum builds up her characters in a similar way as she does the plot: slowly revealing their secrets, pasts and fears over the course of the book. As you’d expect with the main characters we develop a fairly clear picture of Sejer and Skarre over the course of the novel but the minor characters too are equally well depicted, even if only in one aspect of their lives. Annie’s father’s conversation with the man in charge of the crematorium is one of the most beautiful depictions of a grieving father I have read.

Don’t Look Back has all the things I love most in crime fiction: interesting, believable characters, a puzzle-like plot, a setting I can get lost in and a tangible credibility that sometime somewhere that exact scenario has played itself out in reality. Or will one day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Don’t Look Back has been reviewed at Reading Matters and Thoughts of Joy