Black Seconds by Karin Fossum

Our apologies on the long hiatus. As you may have read, most public libraries are crazy busy and Mendocino County Library branches are no exception.

Karin Fossum is well known and extremely well regarded in her native Norway. She is a multiple award winner, beginning her literary career as a poet. Her work has been translated by a couple of translators. Black Seconds was translated by Charlotte Barslund.

The mystery is the 5th of a series of books to be published in the States, featuring Inspector Konrad Sejer. I always find Sejer a bit of a cypher however his rational, humanistic investigative methods are the perfect counterpoint to the quirky characters which form the center of her novels.

All of her Sejer novels are uniformly excellent, balancing a solid mystery with human interest, appealing continuing protagonists and sympathetic view on the marginal and the outcasts.

In brief, the book is about the disappearance of a beautiful little girl called Ida Joner. One evening, she heads off in her little yellow bicycle to a nearby store and never comes back. Inspector Sejer and his sidekick, the angelic looking Jacob Skarre, are called in to find her. They hope they will find her alive. They are afraid to find her dead. At the center of the mystery of her disappearance may be a solitary, autistic man named Emil Mork ... or perhaps not. One never knows with Fossum.

Black Seconds gave me chills. That's not a common occurrence but I've not read such a matter-of-fact even sympathetic rendering of the thoughtlessness, indifference that can lead to a devastating result, almost as a side-effect of one person's following the path of least resistance. Perhaps, in the right circumstances, it could be any of us but yet not ... and that is what gave me that frisson, that creeping sense of otherness. I don't want to say much more because I'd like readers to follow the mystery on their own, come to their own conclusions about the characters.

Read the book and post your thoughts. I'd welcome your take.

As always, this book can be ordered online here if you live in Lake, Mendocino or Sonoma Counties, or from your local library wherever else you live.

~mel