Black Seconds (Inspector Sejer Mystery, #5) (Inspector Sejer)

by Karin Fossum

Charlotte Barslund (Translator)

In this fifth Inspector Sejer mystery, a little girl has vanished without a trace and Sejer must find her before it's too late.

• ISBN10: 0151015279
• ISBN13: 9780151015276
• Publish Date: 1 June 2008 (first published 2 January 2007)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 1 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Houghton Mifflin
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 266
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

This book is part of a detective series, but it’s written like literary fiction. I thought there was some really fantastic imagery; for example, this passage, which alludes to the book’s title:

Her heart was pounding hard and it hurt; she could hear the clock on the wall ticking mechanically. She had always thought of seconds as tiny metallic dots; now they turned into heavy black drops and she felt them fall one by one.

That stuck with me throughout the entire book, and we’re brought back to it in the end as Ida’s cousin Tomme hears a ticking in his head. The plot here consists of several strings that Inspector Sejer masterfully manages to pull together as one. We’re treated to the points of view of several people — Sejer and his partner, Jacob Skarre; Ida’s mother, Helga; Ida’s aunt, Ruth; Tomme; and even Elsa and Emil Johannes Mork — and this gives us a more well-rounded view of the story. Unlike other crime series, the focus here is much more on the story than on one single character. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and look forward to exploring more of Fossum’s work. This emerging genre of 'nordic noir' is quickly becoming one of my favorites.