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

by Karin Fossum

Charlotte Barslund (Translator)

Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off to buy sweets. A good-natured, happy girl, she is looking forward to her tenth birthday. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, Helga Joner, her mother, starts to worry. She phones the shop and various friends, but no one has seen her daughter. As the family goes out looking for Ida, Helga's worst nightmare becomes reality, and they contact the police.

Hundreds of volunteers comb the neighbourhood, but there are no traces of Ida or her bike. As the relatives reach breaking point and the media frenzy begins, Inspector Sejer is calm and reassuring. But he finds the case puzzling. Usually missing children are found within forty-eight hours. Ida Joner seems to have vanished without a trace.

• ISBN10: 1846550181
• ISBN13: 9781846550188
• Publish Date: 5 July 2007 (first published 2 January 2007)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 15 July 2016
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Harvill Secker
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 256
• 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.