Don’t Look Back, by Karin Fossum


“It’s a legend, a story from the old days. If you’re out rowing and hear a splashing sound behind your boat, that’s the sea serpent rising up from the depths. You should never look back, just be careful to keep on rowing. If you pretend to ignore it and leave it in peace, everything will be fine, but if you look back into its eyes, it will pull you down into the great darkness. According to legend, it has red eyes.”

As you’re all aware, I’m very old and very wise, and therefore rarely surprised. If you’ve been following my reviews, you’ll know that although I’ve sampled several Scandinavian mystery writers (the genre has suddenly taken off in the backwash of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy), I’ve mostly not been overwhelmed with them. Too polite, too depressing, too politically correct, and usually not well translated. But when Norwegian author Karin Fossum’s Don’t Look Back showed up cheap for Kindle one day, I took a chance.

I was surprised.

This is a very good book (and the translation is one of the best I’ve seen). In my experience, female authors generally have trouble writing good male characters, but for my money Fossum nailed this one.

She grabs the reader by the short hairs from the very beginning. The novel starts with one of those police situations which anyone with a touch of human feeling has to follow with fascination and a cold clutch of fear at his heart. I won’t tell you how that turns out, but it actually leads into the real central mystery of the novel, the discovery of a dead, fourteen-year-old girl, lying naked and almost unmarked next to a mountain tarn, an isolated body of water which, according to legend, is home to a sea serpent.

Fossum’s hero is Inspector Konrad Sejer (his last name is Norwegian for “Victor”), an aging, empathetic city police detective who lives alone with his dog and mourns his late wife. As he gets to know the victim’s parents, her friends and their families, and her boyfriend, he uncovers one secret after another. There are plenty of motives and plenty of suspects, and plenty of unhappiness to go around in the small mountain town that is the story’s scene. The dead girl will not be the last person to get hurt.

Although religious questions aren’t central (Sejer is agnostic, as is almost everyone in the story—which accurately reflects Norwegian life) it’s interesting that Fossum makes Sejer’s partner, Jakob Skarre, a believer of some kind. His gentle explanation of his faith to his superior, dropped in passing, seemed kind of wishy-washy to me theologically, but (in my opinion) added depth to the whole story.

I’ve already purchased another Inspector Sejer book. Highly recommended, with cautions for language and adult themes.

Mystery, by Jonathan Kellerman

Most detective series novels require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief (and the more you know about real police work, the more is required). Fans (like me) of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series are expected to believe that a Los Angeles psychologist would spend a large part of his free time helping a police detective friend solve crimes, and that the department would smile on the arrangement. But hey, the formula’s in place, it works, why rattle the scenery flats?

The title of Mystery is not a desperate, “I’ve run out of titles” reference to the book’s genre, but the name of the murder victim, a high end prostitute who operated under that name. By pure chance, Alex and his girlfriend Robin, out drinking the night before the murder, saw her sitting alone in a hotel bar, and wondered about the elegant-looking girl who seemed to be waiting for someone who never showed up. The next time Alex sees her is when his shlumpy homosexual detective friend, Milo Sturgis, asks him to come and see the murder scene, where her body has been dumped near a road in the Hollywood Hills. They still don’t know who she is, though, and further investigations lead them to a wealthy, extremely dysfunctional family with a lot of secrets.

I marvel at Kellerman’s ability to keep his formula fresh. What makes this book sing is the author’s profound psychological insight. A particular pleasure this time out is a sub-plot involving a former madame who is dying of cancer and wants Alex’s help in preparing her six-year-old son for her death. The madame’s character is wonderfully complex, at once acutely narcissistic and genuinely maternal. She comes off the page as a fully-rounded, living person, pathetic, offensive and (in some ways) admirable.

There was an oblique echo (not explicitly spelled out) of Kellerman’s belief, stated in his nonfiction book, Savage Spawn, that it’s unhealthy to teach children to use guns. I consider that entirely wrong, but he didn’t preach about it.

Recommended, with the usual cautions for language, violence, and sexual themes.

Who’s Who Infographic

Bob Canada has performed a great service for the Interweb with this Doctor Who infographic:

REVISED Doctor Who Infographic

Posters are available. He also worked up one for the Doctor’s enemies. Continue reading Who’s Who Infographic

Standing Up to San Francisco Rioters

This is incredible and disturbing. Dustin Boyers sees his friend’s car windows broken by Occupy Wall Street thugs in San Francisco and starts yelling at them. He told them to stop breaking things and that they didn’t know the people whose property they were breaking up. He says,

And what was interesting was that they’re the sort of people that hang out with people who only have the same views as they do, so that what I said was almost something they’d never heard. At one point they started chanting, “White boy, go home!” And I answered: “I have a right to be here. I have a right to talk to you. I have a right to engage you.” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that’s true.”

It’s horrifying to see people vandalizing the streets en masse (there’s a video) and equally horrifying to realize some politicians defend them.

And on the radio, I’m hearing people are aborting their children because they want a boy instead of a girl! Dear God! Who defends this?!

A belated notice



Photo: New York Public Library Archives



Yesterday I failed to note the birthday of G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936). Here’s a snippet from All Things Considered:

[The collectivist] knows it would be cheaper if a number of us ate at the same time, so as to use the same table. So it would. It would also be cheaper if a number of us slept at different times, so as to use the same pair of trousers. But the question is not how cheap we are buying a thing, but what are we buying? It is cheap to own a slave. And it is cheaper still to be a slave.

Vlogging Pride & Prejudice

My sister has directed my attention to “a modernized adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice. The story is told primarily through Lizzie Bennet‘s Video Diaries, while being supported by her and other characters social media streams.” There are fifteen short episodes so far (you can start here), and from what I’ve seen, they are cute, funny, very contemporary, and very girly. With Jane Austen as source material, how can this lose? Multiple characters are chatting on Twitter, and those conversations are being collected on Lizzie’s tumblr site, if not elsewhere, and with the many links to clothes and styles, like all the kids do nowadays, perhaps the creators of this show can actually make some money.

Do people actually make money off the Internet? That is so 90s.

A False Dawn, by Tom Lowe

There’s a rather pathetic sub-group among mystery fans (I’m part of it) that’s always on the lookout, without much hope, for the author who will truly fill the shoes of John D. MacDonald and his private eye, Travis McGee. Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford comes the closest so far, in my view, but he doesn’t quite hit the mark.

When I started Tom Lowe’s A False Dawn, I thought I’d found the successor at last. For a few chapters. Then it kind of fell apart, but that first impression was strong enough to give me hopes for this author.

Sean O’Brien resembles Travis McGee in his Florida east coast location (on the St. John’s River in this case), and in living—at least part of the time—on a boat. Also in his relations with his neighbors at the marina. But the great resonance is found in Sean’s narration, in his wry and world-weary decency.

Sean is a retired Miami police detective. He left the job after his wife died of cancer, and devotes himself to restoring his house and his boat. Also to looking after his dog, a dachshund named Max. He has no intention of interfering with police matters until he discovers a dying girl lying on a river bank. She expires in his arms, speaking words in a language he doesn’t know.

Although two of the cops who come to investigate seem decent and competent, one of them appears determined to pin the girl’s murder on Sean. Sean’s desire to clear himself, as well as a feeling of obligation to the dead girl, impels him to put his own detective expertise to work, leading him to discover a festering swamp of human smuggling, sex trafficking, and political corruption.

Although Sean O’Brien has the makings of a great character, in my opinion, he didn’t impress me so much as this story went on. His penchant for walking, eyes wide open, into ridiculously dangerous situations struck me as simply self-destructive. And frankly, I’m tired of stories (SPOILER HERE) where wealthy industrialists turn out to serial killers. How many millionaire serial killers have there been in real life? How many have you encountered in novels, movies, and TV shows? The final showdown didn’t work well for me either. I found it far-fetched.

There’s an element of mysticism in this book which I’m not sure how to take. A spiritualist makes a prediction which comes true, but Sean has nothing good to say about her and seems to find her occult practices repellant. There’s also a mysterious Native American character, who may or may not be a ghost. At one point, at a grave, Sean makes the sign of the cross.

All in all, I give A False Dawn a mixed review. Still, on the basis of the strong opening, I think I might be willing to give Tom Lowe another chance. I think he has the potential to become a strong and successful detective writer.

Cautions of language, violence, and sexual situations.

The Truth? How Inconvenient.

Daniel Darling talks about the writing life in this post on inconvenient truths. ” For example:

4) You must fight for space to do your work. Because you will not get rich writing, it’s likely that you will have to write in the margins of your daily life. This means you’ll have to create time and space to do it, in between your job, your family obligations, and your church responsibilities. Jon Acuff, in his book Quitter, calls this “hustling at 5am.” In other words, if you really want to do this, get up early and write (or in my case, stay up late). And you’ll have to constantly discipline yourself and fight for it.

Stephen Fry on Words and Stuff

Our friend, Brendan of Digital Sextant, reviews Stephen Fry’s English Delight, a BBC radio show on English words. He likes it a good bit. Get Fry Audio on Amazon here.

On an mostly unrelated note, here’s a patriotic sketch from Fry and Hugh Laurie.

Memorial Day, 2012

I have only known one person in my life who died in war, that I’m aware of. His name was Gordon Gunhus, he graduated from high school with me, and he died in Vietnam. We weren’t particular friends, but I have every reason to believe that the life he laid down was a life of considerable promise. Blessed be the memory.