When Eva Magnus, out with her young
daughter, finds a body of a man in the river she pretends to phone the police
from a call box then calmly walks away from the scene. In time another woman
reports the find and Inspector Sejer is called in to investigate. The dead man, a car mechanic, has been
missing for a while, and clearly died a violent death so now the missing
persons case becomes a murder hunt.
That makes two for Sejer to solve. The victim
disappeared shortly after a local prostitute was killed; a coincidence or a
connection? As Sejer works through the evidence will he discover the reasons
for Eva’s reluctance to get involved? No
spoilers here, so suffice it to say the outcome is played out in the gritty
town and dramatic countryside of the book’s Norwegian setting.
I felt the two main narratives – Sejer’s
methodical police procedural and Eva’s increasingly frantic activities – though
naturally contrasting could have combined better than they did; but both were
enjoyable on their own terms.
This is the first in the translated
Inspector Sejer series and given the stiff competition in the detective fiction
genre it may be a while before I sample the second.
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