Bad Intentions (Den onde viljen) is the ninth novel in Norwegian and the seventh in English in Karin Fossum’s excellent series about Inspector Konrad Sejer. It is a psychological thriller about living with bad conscience and a police procedural where we partly know whodunit.

The plot is very interesting. Early one September day, three old friends – Axel, Reilly and Jon – go on a weekend trip together. Jon has severe psychological problems and suffers from anxiety attacks. Axel and Reilly have picked him up at the hospital and brought him to their favorite place, a remote cabin in the forest, to cheer him up.

They are restless, and decide to row out on the Dead Water Lake, the little lake next to the cabin. Out on the lake, Jon starts to feel very anxious and jumps into the lake. One of the friends wants to try to save him; the other one prevents it. They decide to construct a shared story about what happened that presents it as a suicide, and they wait until the next morning before calling the police.

When the police, Konrad Sejer and his assistant Skarre arrives, Sejer and Skarre quickly detect some problems with the story the two boys tell them. Some of the facts do not fit the story all that well. But the boys – the only witnesses – are consistent and tell the same story. Sejer strongly feels that the boys are hiding something. However, finding what they hide and the truth behind Jon’s death will prove very difficult. Weeks pass without further clues, and then in a nearby lake the body of a teenage boy floats to the surface.

Bad Intentions is an intelligent psychological crime novel that deals with bad conscious and its effects on the human mind. Fossum has created a smart plot where lies lead to further lies and actions to cover the initial lies, and very cleverly describes the consequences of this within a friendship. As the context changes, what was once mutual trust turns gradually into fear and distrust. And, as Fossum shows, it is sometimes very hard to hide the truth – it has a way of popping up when you least expect it!

I was very fascinated by this book. It is excellently written and cleverly plotted. It just feels like a very believable, very real story, and at the same time as it is suspenseful and entertaining, it is also a book that made me ponder. I strongly recommend Bad Intentions – it is a marvelous crime fiction book!

Links to books by Karin Fossum at amazon US, amazon UK, amazon CAN, and Fossum at Barnes & Noble

The Water’s Edge (Den som elsker noe annet, 2007) is Karin Fossum’s eight book in the Inspector Sejer series and the sixth to be translated into English. The translation by Charlotte Barslund is very good – impressive, actually.

A middle aged couple – Reinhardt and Kristine Ris – on their usual Sunday walk in the woods find the body of a small boy lying at the foot of a tree. He has a T-shirt on, but is naked from the waist down. He has been murdered.

Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre arrive at the scene of the crime and find out that the little boy is eight-year-old Jonas August Løwe. The couple had seen a man on the track in the woods walking away from the location of the body.Their descriptions of the man varied slightly, but the woman, Kristine, said that he looked like H.C. Andersen, the famous Danish writer. It also turns out the boy has been sexually abused.

Unexpectedly, the finding of the body triggers changes in the the Ris’ relationship. Kristine starts to long for a child. Reinhardt seems to excited and somewhat obsessed with the murder. The relationship seems to be falling apart.

Sejer and Skarre contact all the known pedophiles in the area, they interview the children at the school, the parents and teachers, but they
don’t get anywhere. Things get even worse when another boy – Edwin – disappears.

The Water’s Edge is a great book from Karin Fossum. The only thing I did not like about it was that Fossum was a little too eager to impart on her readers all her knowledge about the subject of pedophilia. On the other hand, she does not condemn but writes instead in a somewhat distanced and detached style which I found very appropriate. Also, Karin Fossum manages to show us how the terrible incidents are viewed both from the point of view of the perpetrator and by detectives Konrad Sejer and Jacob Skarre.

The Water’s Edge is a well written, sober book dealing with a very difficult subject in a sensitive and enlightening fashion. It is a great read and highly recommended!

Read more about Karin Fossum and her books at Scandinavianbooks.com!

Links to books by Karin Fossum at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

Karin Fossum, Norway’s bestselling “queen of crime”, brings literary elegance and moral ambiguity to the detective novel.
– The Independent

As usual, I am very impressed by Karin Fossum’s talent and originality.
– Eurocrime.co.uk