Konrad Sejer

The debut mystery novel in the Inspector Sejer Series from Norway's award-winning author of Hell Fire and The Whisperer. Eva Magnus and her daughter are out walking by the river when they make a grisly discovery: a man's body floating on the water's surface. Eva goes to call the police, but when she reaches the phone, she dials another number altogether for her own reasons. But when the police find the body anyway, Inspector Sejer and his team quickly determine that the man, Egil, died from a violent attack. But Egil himself had been missing for months, and the trail to his killer is all but vanished. It's just as puzzling as another unsolved case on Sejer's desk: the murder of a prostitute, found dead just before Egil went missing. And as Sejer tries to piece together these two impossible cases, it soon appears that the two murders are connected. And if the Inspector can't figure out the culprit behind the crimes, someone else is going to pay with their life.

At the foot of the imposing Kollen Mountain lies a small, idyllic village, where neighbors know neighbors and children play happily in the streets. But when the body of a teenage girl is found by the lake at the mountaintop, the town's tranquility is shattered forever. Annie was strong, intelligent, and loved by everyone. What went so terribly wrong? Doggedly, yet subtly, Inspector Sejer uncovers layer upon layer of distrust and lies beneath the town's seemingly perfect façade.

Inspector Sejer is hard at work again, investigating the brutal murder of a woman who lived alone in the middle of the woods. The chief suspect is another loner, a schizophrenic recently escaped from a mental institution. The only witness is a twelve-year-old boy, overweight, obsessed with archery, and a resident at a home for delinquents. When a demented man robs a nearby bank and accidentally takes the suspect hostage, the three misfits are drawn into an uneasy alliance. Shrewdly, patiently, as is his way, Inspector Sejer confronts a case where the strangeness of the crime is matched only by the strangeness of the criminals, and where small-town prejudices warp every piece of information he tries to collect. Fossum once again provides extraordinary insight into marginalized lives and richly evokes the atmosphere she captured so brilliantly in Don't Look Back.

When the theft of a purse from a stroller results in an infant's death, two teenagers are in trouble. Unaware of the enormity of their crime, Zipp and Andreas are intent on committing still another. They follow an elderly woman home, and Andreas enters her house with his ever-reliable switchblade. Motionless in the dark, Zipp waits for his friend to come out. Inspector Konrad Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre see no connection between the infant's death and the reported disappearance of a local delinquent. And so while the confusion in the world outside mounts, the chilling, heart-stopping truth unfolds inside the old woman's home. Unflappable as ever, Sejer digs below the surface of small-town tranquillity in an effort to understand how and why violence destroys everyday lives. Another brilliantly observed, precisely rendered psychological mystery from the highly acclaimed Karin Fossum.

When perpetual bachelor Gunder Jomann goes to India for two weeks and comes home married, the town of Elvestad is stunned. On the day the Indian bride is supposed to arrive, the battered body of a woman is found in a meadow on the outskirts of town. None of the "good people of Elvestad" can believe that anyone among them would be capable of such a brutal murder. But in his quiet, formal way, Inspector Konrad Sejer understands that good people can commit atrocious deeds, and that no one is altogether innocent-including the café owner who knows too much, the girl who wants to be a chief witness, and the bodybuilder with no outlet for his terrible strength. Another brilliantly conceived, dark novel from one of Europe's most successful crime writers.

Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off toward town. A good-natured, happy girl, she is looking forward to her tenth birthday. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, her mother starts to worry. She phones store owners, Ida's friends-anyone who could have seen her. But no one has. Suspicion immediately falls on Emil Mork, a local character who lives alone and hasn't spoken since childhood. His mother insists on cleaning his house weekly-although she's sometimes afraid of what she might find there. A mother's worst nightmare in either case-to lose a child or to think a child capable of murder. As Ida's relatives reach the breaking point and the media frenzy surrounding the case begins, Inspector Konrad Sejer is his usual calm and reassuring self. But he's puzzled. And disturbed. This is the strangest case he's seen in years.

Charlo Torp, a newly recovered gambler, makes his way through the slush to Harriet Krohn's apartment, flowers in hand. Determined to pay off his debts, Charlo plans to steal the old woman's antique silver collection. But he didn't expect her to put up a fight. The following morning, Inspector Sejer is called to the scene to investigate. Harriet is dead, her silver missing, and the only clue in the apartment is an abandoned bouquet. When Charlo sees the news, he knows he should be relieved, but he's heard of Sejer's amazing record - the detective has solved every case he's ever been assigned to. Told through the eyes of a killer, The Murder of Harriet Krohn poses the question: How far would you go to turn your life around, and could you live with yourself afterward?

Reinhardt and Kristine Ris, a married couple, are out for a Sunday walk when they discover the body of a boy and see the figure of a man limping away. They alert the police, but not before Reinhardt, to Kristine's horror, kneels down and takes photographs of the dead child with his cell phone. Inspectors Konrad Sejer and Jakob Skarre begin to make inquiries in the little town of Huseby. But then another boy disappears, and an explanation seems more remote than ever. Meanwhile, the Rises' marriage unravels as Reinhardt becomes obsessed with the tragic events and his own part in them. The Water's Edge is a riveting portrayal of a community in turmoil from Karin Fossum, Norway's "Queen of Crime." This e-book includes a sample chapter of THE MURDER OF HARRIET KROHN.

In the wake of Stieg Larsson's best-selling novels, readers are discovering the rich trove of modern Scandinavian crime fiction. If you've devoured the Millennium trilogy and are looking for your next read, Karin Fossum and her bone-chillingly bleak psychological thrillers have won the admiration of the likes of Ruth Rendell and Colin Dexter (of Inspector Morse fame).  In Bad Intentions, Konrad Sejer must face down his memories and fears as he struggles to determine why the corpses of troubled young men keep surfacing in local lakes.  The first victim, Jon Moreno, was getting better. His psychiatrist said so, and so did his new friend at the hospital, Molly Gram, with her little-girl-lost looks. He was racked by a mysterious guilt that had driven him to a nervous breakdown one year earlier. But when he drowns in Dead Water Lake, Sejer hesitates to call it a suicide.  Then another corpse is found in a lake, a Vietnamese immigrant. And Sejer begins to feel his age weigh on him. Does he still have the strength to pursue the elusive explanations for human evil? This e-book includes a sample chapter of THE MURDER OF HARRIET KROHN.

"Pranks can have lethal consequences, even when they seem harmless to start with . . . A poison bonbon that ranks with the best of Ruth Rendell."-Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly One mild summer evening, a young couple are enjoying dinner while their daughter sleeps peacefully in her stroller under a tree. When her mother steps outside she is stunned: the child is covered in blood. Inspector Sejer is called to the hospital to meet the family. Mercifully, the child is unharmed, but the parents are deeply shaken, and Sejer spends the evening trying to understand why anyone would carry out such a sinister prank. Then, just before midnight, somebody rings his doorbell. No one is at the door, but the caller has left a small gray envelope on Sejer's mat. From his living room window, the inspector watches a figure disappear into the darkness. Inside the envelope Sejer finds a postcard bearing a short message: Hell begins now. "No one can thoroughly chill the blood the way Karin Fossum can . . . will put you away, no questions asked."-Los Angeles Times

A new addition to the captivating Inspector Sejer series, the first since The Caller, from Norway's finest crime writer Carmen and Nicolai failed to resuscitate their son, Tommy, after finding him floating in their backyard pond. When Inspector Skarre arrives on the scene, Carmen reports that Tommy, a healthy toddler with Down syndrome, wandered into the garden while Nicolai was working in the basement and she was cleaning the house. Skarre senses something is off with Carmen's story and consults his trusted colleague, the famed Inspector Sejer. An autopsy reveals Tommy's lungs to be full of soap. When Sejer and Skarre revisit the couple, Carmen, an epileptic, changes her story, confessing that she'd been knocked unconscious by a seizure while bathing Tommy. When she came to, she found him drowned in the tub and, horrified and frightened, threw him into the pond. But Skarre and Sejer's doubt is not appeased and the case is reopened. What more could Carmen be hiding? And what lengths will she take to cover her guilt? As Carmen's own family starts to doubt her, Skarre and Sejer work to find the truth.

A gruesome tableau awaits Inspector Konrad Sejer in the oppressive summer heat: a woman and a young boy lay dead in a pool of blood near a dank trailer. The motivation behind the deaths of Bonnie Hayden and her five-year-old son, Simon, is mysterious-there is no sign of robbery. Who would brutally stab a defenseless woman and her child? In a parallel story, another mother, Mass Malthe, navigates life with her adult son, Eddie. It's a relationship some would call too close, since Eddie's father, a man he obsesses over, abandoned them many years ago. As Sejer searches for the truth behind the seemingly senseless killings, Hell Fire deftly probes why we lie to those closest to us, and what drives people to commit the most horrific of crimes.

In this tense and twisty latest from Norway's maven of crime, time shifts between Inspector Sejer's interrogation of the accused Ragna Reigel and the shocking events that led up to her arrest. How did this lonely, quiet woman come to kill a man-or did she? How did a lonely, quiet woman come to kill a man-or did she? Ragna Riegel is a soft-spoken woman of routines. She must have order in her life, and she does, until one day she finds a letter in her mailbox with her name on the envelope and a clear threat written in block capitals on the sheet inside. With the arrival of the letter, and eventually others like it, Ragna's carefully constructed life begins to unravel into a nightmare-threatened by an unknown enemy, paranoid and unable to sleep, her isolation becomes all the more extreme. Ragna's distress does culminate in a death, but she is the perpetrator rather than the victim. The Whisperer shifts between Inspector Sejer's interrogation of Ragna and the shocking events that led up to her arrest. Sejer thinks it is an open-and-shut case, but is it? Compelling and unnerving, The Whisperer probes plausible madness in everyday life and asks us to question assumptions even in its final moments.

Critically acclaimed across Europe, Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar. The inaugural Inspector Sejer novels have been conveniently packaged together for your very own chilling reading experience. EVA'S EYE When the body of a man floats to the surface of a river, Inspector Sejer is called in. Sejer and his team determine that the man, Egil, died in a violent attack. But Egil has been missing for months, and the trail to his killer has gone cold. It's as puzzling as another unsolved case on Sejer's desk: the murder of a prostitute who was found dead just three days before Egil went missing. Sejer sets to work piecing together the fragments of these two impossible cases, soon enough he realizes that they might not be as separate as they had seemed. DON'T LOOK BACK At the foot of the imposing Kollen Mountain lies a small, idyllic village where neighbors know neighbors and children play happily in the streets. But when the body of a teenage girl is found by the lake at the mountaintop, the town's tranquility is shattered forever. Annie was strong, intelligent, and loved by everyone. What went so terribly wrong? Doggedly, yet subtly, Inspector Sejer uncovers layer upon layer of distrust and lies beneath the town's seemingly perfect façade. HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF Inspector Sejer is hard at work again, investigating the murder of a woman who lived alone in the middle of the woods. The chief suspect is another loner, a schizophrenic recently escaped from a mental institution. The only witness is a twelve-year-old boy, overweight, obsessed with archery, and a resident at a home for delinquents. Shrewdly, patiently, as is his way, Sejer confronts a case where the strangeness of the crime is matched only by the strangeness of the criminals, and where small-town prejudices warp every piece of information he tries to collect.