Review: HELLFIRE, Karin Fossum

• this edition published by Harvill Secker 2016
• translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson
• #12 in the Inspector Conrad Sejer series
• 276 pages
• ISBN 978-1-846-55940-2
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Penguin Books Australia)

A mother and child are found brutally murdered in an old caravan on a remote piece of land. A bloody footprint is discovered at the scene, and Chief Inspector Sejer is called to investigate.

Meanwhile, another mother, dying of cancer, confesses to her 21-year-old son that he is adopted. The man who abandoned them, whom the boy has become obsessed by, is not his real father.

Why do we lie to those closest to us? Hellfire delves deep into the dark heart of family, and what drives people to commit the most horrific of crimes.

My Take

I'd almost forgotten how very readable this series is.

We see the action of the novel from three points of view: Bonnie works as a home help. She has a small son Simon and is a single mother. Christmas is approaching. Bonnie visits ten homes a week, and there are little vignettes from each of her visits. In the same time frame we meet Mass and her 21 year old son Eddie. Eddie appears to have something similar to Asbergers and is unable to work. He is very anxious to know more about his father whom his mother says died in Denmark some years earlier. But in reality what Mass tells Eddie is a tissue of lies. In the third scenario we jump to Inspector Sejer and the investigation into a double murder six months later.

The interesting thing for me was that this police procedural felt almost pedestrian until the breakthrough came. Sejer fairly quickly discovers the identity of the bodies in the caravan but when he contacts the family they give him edited versions of the facts, leaving out bits they didn't think he needed to know.

The fact that the novel jumps between three narratives and a time frame that spans over six months keeps the reader on their toes. A couple of red herrings are thrown in just to create some false trails.

Easy to see why Karin Fossum is so highly thought of. As you will see from the list below, I generally enjoy her books.

My Rating: 4.7

I've also read
BLACK SECONDS
BROKEN
THE WATER'S EDGE
4.9, BAD INTENTIONS
5.0, THE CALLER
4.7, I CAN SEE IN THE DARK
5.0, THE DROWNED BOY

Review: THE DROWNED BOY, Karin Fossum

• first published 2015, June 4
• available for pre-order at Amazon
  
  
• #11 in the Conrad Sejer series
• review copy from Random House UK via NetGalley
• translated by Kari Dickson
• ISBN 9781448192311

Synopsis (NetGalley)

‘He'd just learnt to walk,’ she said. ‘He was sitting playing on his blanket, then all of a sudden he was gone.’

A 16-month-old boy is found drowned in a pond right by his home. Chief Inspector Sejer is called to the scene as there is something troubling about the mother’s story. As even her own family turns against her, Sejer is determined to get to the truth.

My take

Carmen and Nicolai are young parents but none of their family doubts that they are good parents. Their son Tommy is a sturdy and healthy toddler who has just learned to walk. One hot August day he apparently wanders from the house into the pond at the bottom of their garden and drowns. But there is something about the way Carmen relates what has happened that Conrad Sejer finds strange, particularly the way she accepts it all, despite the fact that she is constantly in tears. Her husband is distraught.

When Sejer discovers that Tommy had Downs Syndrome he can't help wondering if the drowning really was an accident.

This is a very readable story, where Fossum has taken a very plausible plot and explored the character of the mother in particular, but also the impact of the death of the little boy on the whole family.

My rating: 5.0

I've also reviewed
BLACK SECONDS
BROKEN
THE WATER'S EDGE
4.9, BAD INTENTIONS
5.0, THE CALLER
4.7, I CAN SEE IN THE DARK

Review: I CAN SEE IN THE DARK, Karin Fossum

• Published by Harvill Secker 2013
  
• translated by James Anderson from Norwegian
• ISBN 978-1-846-55613-5
• 250 pages
• library book

Synopsis (Random House Australia)

A brilliant stand-alone crime novel from Norway's queen of crime.

Riktor doesn't like the way the policeman comes straight into the house without knocking. He doesn't like the arrogant way he observes his home.The policeman doesn't tell him why he's there, and Riktor doesn't ask. Because he knows he's guilty of a terrible crime.

But it turns out that the policeman isn't looking for a missing person. He is accusing Riktor of something totally unexpected. Riktor doesn't have a clear conscience, but this is a crime he certainly didn't commit.

My Take

If you have a loved one in a nursing home, this certainly might make you wonder what motivates the people who work there.

Riktor nurses the elderly. That is his speciality. He says he wants to bring something special to their last days. But it isn't the milk of human kindness that flows through his veins, but a very nasty sadistic streak, that is finally his undoing.

I CAN SEE IN THE DARK is told from Riktor's point of view. Because of his appearance he has been an outsider all of his life and it seems not even his mother really loved him. He lives on his own, and has no friends, although occasionally he thinks he would like a woman in his life.

But then he comes up against a policeman who says he can smell a crime.

An engrossing read, well up with Karin Fossum's best.

My rating: 4.7

Other reviews to check

• Crime Fiction Lover 
• Fiction Fascination 
• Cappelen Damm

Other Karin Fossum titles I've reviewed

BLACK SECONDS
BROKEN
THE WATER'S EDGE
4.9, BAD INTENTIONS
5.0, THE CALLER

Review: THE CALLER, Karin Fossum

• first published 2009
• English translation from Norwegian by K.E. Semmel 2011
• published in English by Harvill Secker, London
• ISBN 978-1-846-55393-6
• 296 pages
• Source: my local library
• #8 in the Inspector Sejer series

Synopsis (Amazon)

One mild summer evening Lily and her husband are enjoying a meal while their baby daughter sleeps peacefully in her pram beneath a maple tree. But when Lily steps outside she is paralysed with terror. The child is bathed in blood.

Inspector Sejer is called to the hospital to meet the family. Mercifully the baby is unharmed, but her parents are deeply shaken. Sejer spends the evening trying to comprehend why anyone would carry out such a sinister prank.

Then, just before midnight, somebody rings his doorbell. The corridor is empty, but the caller has left a small grey envelope on the mat. From his living room window, the inspector watches a figure slip across the car park and disappear into the darkness. Inside the envelope Sejer finds a postcard bearing a short message. Hell begins now.

My take

When you think about it, the main plot line of THE CALLER is simple enough. Someone is playing pranks. The list of pranks that begins with the baby covered in blood grows: a death notice in the paper for someone who is not dead, a prize sheep painted with orange paint, a funeral home requested to collect the body of a seriously ill man who has not yet died, tyres slashed. In themselves the pranks are not life threatening but they are malicious.

The reader learns early on the identity of the person playing the pranks, and I think there is the possibility that at least one other person in the community knows who the "prankster" is. But the pranks are vicious acts, perpetrated by an adolescent in whom real anger boils as the result of a life time of neglect. And despite the fact that he is in his late teens he is incapable of seeing beyond the immediate consequences of his pranks. He can't see the sense of security that his pranks have removed from his victims, and he can't forecast their long term consequences. And then two of the pranks have serious consequences. Someone dies.

This is #8 in Fossum's Inspector Sejer series and a mark of her popularity with English speaking readers that there has been such a small time lapse since the original publication in Norwegian. If you've not read any of the series before, then you could start with this one. It will send you looking for the others. It presents Inspector Konrad Sejer in a kindly light: ageing, a little worried by health issues, and with great empathy for the victims of these crimes. But he even feels drawn to the prankster himself. He and his team look for the thread that binds the pranks together: how does the prankster select his victims?

There's an ambiguity to the ending which seems characteristic of Fossum stories. If what the prankster says is true, there is one prank that was not his doing. And what was Else Meiner doing at the Sparbo Dam?

An excellent read. My rating: 5.0

Other reviews for you to read

• AustCrimeFiction
• Petrona
• Reactions to Reading
• Euro Crime

Inspector Konrad Sejer, Norway (courtesy Euro Crime) - the first date is the year of publication in English, the number at the end is the series order.

• In the Darkness	2012	1
• Don't Look Back (Se deg ikke tilbake!, 1996)	2002	2
• He Who Fears the Wolf (Den som frykter ulven, 1997)	2003	3
• When the Devil Holds the Candle (Djevelen holder lyset , 1998)	2004	4
• Calling Out for You! (apa The Indian Bride) (Elskede Poona, 2000)	2005	5
• Black Seconds (Svarte sekunder, 2002)	2007	6
• The Water's Edge	2009	8
• Bad Intentions	2010	9
• The Caller	2011	10

Other Karin Fossum reviews on MiP
BLACK SECONDS
(also contains mini reviews of
DON'T LOOK BACK,
HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF,
WHEN THE DEVIL HOLDS THE CANDLE, and
CALLING OUT FOR YOU)
BROKEN (a stand-alone)
THE WATER'S EDGE
4.9, BAD INTENTIONS

Review: BAD INTENTIONS, Karin Fossum

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harvill Secker (1 July 2010)
• Language English (translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund)
• ISBN-10: 1846552923
• ISBN-13: 978-1846552922

I read BAD INTENTIONS on my Kindle, a review  e-copy supplied by the publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through NetGalley

Publisher's Blurb
In this chilling return to the Inspector Konrad Sejer series, the detective and his partner investigate the deaths of two teenagers in rural Norway. One victim was a lonely Vietnamese boy, the other a psychiatric patient let out for a weekend in the woods with friends. Grief devastates their two mothers. Sejer can’t help himself and, overcome by sympathy, he promises to deliver an explanation for what has befallen them. The pursuit will bring him face-to-face with pure evil . . .

My take
Once they were just little kids with skinny legs and pointy knees. How did they become so evil?

Any second now Axel’s green Mercedes will appear around the bend. While he waits, he chews his nails. He has bitten them right down. The tips of his fingers are red and sore. He thinks about everything that has happened and about how he is going to move on. He knows he has to make a choice…. But sometimes we need to face reality. And perhaps that is not fair, but nothing about this situation is fair. It’s best to keep my mouth shut, he thinks, I’m protecting Axel and Reilly. They are my friends, and we’re in this together for ever.

Despite the fact that it is #7 in Fossum's Inspector Sejer series this is not a police procedural. It is rather a melancholic exploration of the way guilt can tunnel its way through the minds of those who feel it. Jon is the first to break and from then on the slippery slide is inevitable for the others. Who will crack next? And did they actually commit a crime?

Sejer and his colleague Skarre seem almost to take a backseat in this novel, observers and prompters to the final undoing:

He sat listening to the hum of the police station. He liked being a part of a big engine. He liked interrogating people, he liked spotting the lie when it came. A lie had its own pitch, and over many years he had learned to recognize it. He liked the moment when the confession finally spilled out, when all the cards were on the table and the course of events could be mapped and filed.

The story is an exploration too of how sometimes the victims of crime can unexpectedly become allies who force the truth to come out.
There is so much to think about in BAD INTENTIONS and it really came up to my expectations.

My rating: 4.9

Other reviews of Karin Fossum titles on this blog:

• BLACK SECONDS
• BLACK OUT
• BROKEN
• THE WATER'S EDGE

 Other reviews of BAD INTENTIONS

• Karen Meek on EuroCrime
• Petrona
• International Noir Fiction

I'm going to "use" BAD INTENTIONS in

• Crime Fiction Alphabet for the letter B
• Nordic Challenge 2011 
• e-book challenge

Review: THE WATER'S EDGE, Karin Fossum

Harvill Secker, 2009
Translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund
ISBN 978-1-846-55170-3, 227 pages.
#6 in the Inspector Sejer series.

They were a couple, but they had been married for many years and they no longer held hands. The woman was wearing a raspberry red coat, the man a white windbreaker. He was constantly one step of her, tall, self-assured and fit. The woman watched him furtively while she contemplated her own thoughts.

As they begin the return path of their usual Sunday afternoon walk in the woods near the lake, Kristine and Ris Reinhardt meet a man leaving the forest. Shortly after that they come across the body of a young boy naked from the waist down.

Identifying the boy is not very difficult for Inspector Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre. He has already been reported missing by his anxious mother. Working out how he died is more difficult, as is locating his murderer.

The search for the murderer almost takes a back seat to some of the issues that Fossum wanted to explore in this novel - why couples grow apart, how paedophiles are made, why something that is regarded as a sexual offence in one society has traditionally not been so in other cultures.

The disappearance of another ten year old boy from the same school, this time a morbidly obese one, serves to complicate the murder investigation, and introduces other elements in the investigation of human behaviour.

THE WATER'S EDGE is a relatively quick read but raises some disturbing social issues.

My rating: 4.7

You may be interested in checking the following reviews:

• Books to the Ceiling:
  In this novel, Karin Fossum has dared to portray not one but two child molesters as less than monstrous human beings.
• International Noir Fiction:
  Karin Fossum likes to shake up the formula for her crime fiction (and for crime fiction generally) in her Inspector Sejer novels. The latest to be translated into English, The Water’s Edge (Den som elsker noe annet in the original Norwegian, literayy "he who loves something else), is no exception.
• Do You Write Under Your Own Name:
  .. it took me a long time to read The Water’s Edge.
• Petrona on Euro Crime:
  The first half of this novel is more of a dissection of a marriage than a mystery.
• DJsKrimiBlog
  Fossum´s foremost strength is her ability to describe the emotions of all the people who get involved in the case

My other reviews of Karin Fossum novels on this blog:

• BLACK SECONDS
• BLACK OUT
• BROKEN

Don't Always Hit the Mark #4

The general idea behind this regular feature on my blog is that even the best authors, or your favourite ones, don't always achieve the same rating with the reader. Today's featured writer almost proves my observation wrong. Her books nearly always hit the bulls-eye with me.

My general benchmarks are

5.0 Excellent
4.0 Very Good
3.0 Average
2.0 Poor
1.0 Did Not Like
0 Did Not Finish

My featured author today is Karin Fossum, often referred to as the Norwegian Queen of Crime.

There are 3 full length reviews on my blog

• BLACK SECONDS
• BLACK OUT
• BROKEN

There are some mini-reviews here.

My ratings in descending order

1. CALLING OUT FOR YOU! aka INDIAN BRIDE (2001) my rating 5
2. DON'T LOOK BACK (2002) my rating 5
3. BLACK SECONDS (2007) my rating 5
4. WHEN THE DEVIL HOLDS A CANDLE (1998) my rating 4.5
5. BROKEN (2006) my rating 4.3
   

You can see from those ratings how often she hits the target for me.
Part of the reason is the engaging Inspector Conrad Sejer who features in her series. The only stand alone in the list above is BROKEN. The other reason why I have enjoyed the Sejer books so much is that I can imagine the central event happening to me.

Not all of Karin Fossum's Sejer series has been translated into English, and just to annoy readers even more, they have actually been translated out of order.
I haven't yet read the most recent one translated: THE WATER'S EDGE.

Here is the order you should read them in

1. EVE's EYE - not sure this is available in English
2. DON'T LOOK BACK
3. HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF
4. WHEN THE DEVIL HOLDS THE CANDLE
5. CALLING OUT FOR YOU
6. BLACK SECONDS
7. THE MURDER OF HARRIET KRONE - not sure this is available in English
8. THE WATER'S EDGE
   

All references to Karin Fossum on my blog.

Review: BLACK SECONDS, Karin Fossum

This review is one of a number that I am re-publishing as they were originally published elsewhere, not on this blog.

Harvill Secker, Sep 2007
translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.
ISBN 0151015279, 272pages

Helga Joner has often thought that her nine year old daughter Ida is too good to be true, too good to last. The disappearance of a child is every parent's worst nightmare. When Ida fails to arrive home from the shop, Helga feels she had been rehearsing the moment for years. First Helga and her sister Ruth scour the streets where they might find Ida, without success, and then they ring the police. Helga feels that somehow she has tempted fate, setting off an inevitable chain of events.

When Inspector Konrad Sejer arrives at her house, Helga feels instinctively that he will find Ida. As time passes Sejer becomes concerned that no trace has been found of Ida or the bright yellow bicycle she rode to the shop. One hundred and fifty volunteers search for Ida without success. Eight days later there are still no clues, the search is to be scaled down, and a chance comment by Helga to Sejer gives them something new to work on.

The careful reader will pick up the clues laid by Fossum early in the book, and probably feel at the book's end that he/she has always known where it was headed. But that won't diminish your enjoyment of this novel. The path is rich with scenes, characters, and explorations of how people think, and why they make the choices they do. Even so, nothing is certain, the characters are as large as life, and the scenarios so believable.

This is the fifth title in author Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer series. What a pity it has taken five years for an English translation of this masterpiece by the Norwegian "Queen of Crime" to become available. If you've never read anything by Karin Fossum, after BLACK SECONDS you'll want to start the series at beginning, enjoying the connections between her novels, the plots she creates, and the development of the character of Konrad Sejer. Let's hope the next two novels in the series, already published in Norwegian, become more quickly available.

Karin Fossum lives in Oslo, and, in her early fifties, is a relatively young writer. Her successful Inspector Konrad Sejer series has been translated into over 16 languages. She won the Nordic Glass Key award in 1997 for DON'T LOOK BACK, and in 2005 CALLING OUT FOR YOU was shortlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger.

My rating 5.0

Oct 2007 review originally published on Murder and Mayhem

Other links on my blog

• When I first began this blog I listed Karin Fossum as one of my favourite authors
• Review: BROKEN

Other mini-reviews:

DON'T LOOK BACK
The second time I have read this book by the 'Norwegian Queen of Crime' and I liked it even better the second time around. A six-year-old child disappears, terrifying her parents; when she suddenly returns home, a teenager is found murdered on a mountain path, her naked body carefully covered with a jacket. And the teenager’s on-and-off again boyfriend has lived through a childhood so nightmarish that he barely survives, only to find himself a murder suspect.There is comfort in the person of Inspector Sejer, the man charged with solving this murder in the picturesque setting near the Kollen Mountains. With his calm demeanor, the gray-haired inspector pursues anyone who knew the murdered girl, peeling away the façade of this idyllic village. The teenager’s shocking death has unsettled everyone, but there is an appalling paucity of clues for the inspector to work with on this puzzling case.
My rating: 5

HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF
is the second title and for some reason I have no record.
This is the blurb from Fantastic Fiction
Superb plotting, fresh style and compassionate, detailed treatment of characters have made the Inspector Sejer Mysteries bestsellers in their native Norway. A twelve-year-old boy runs wildly into his local police station claiming to have seen Halldis Horn's brutally murdered corpse. Errki Johrma, an escaped psychiatric patient and known town misfit, was sighted at the scene disappearing into the woods. The next morning the local bank is robbed at gunpoint. Making his escape the robber takes a hostage and flees and, once again, a suspect takes to the woods.

WHEN THE DEVIL HOLDS A CANDLE
Translated from the Norwegian and starring her detective creation, Inspector Konrad Sejer and his sidekick, Jacob Skarre, the book tells the tale of two delinquent youths who accidentally kill a child when snatching a purse from a pram. Later that day, a life-changing event occurs between the two friends, Andreas and Zipp, who – in order to erase its memory – choose to rob an elderly woman. Except that Andreas enters her house, but never leaves again. While Zipp ponders where he is and the police close the net around the baby's murderers, Fossum takes you inside the house to witness the grim goings on. She draws the reader into the mind of the old woman, explaining her actions and her perceptions of the young man she has trapped there, even as she recounts the grisly events taking place behind her closed doors. It also touches on the ongoing saga of Sejer, his newfound love for Sara and the hassles that affect his family and friends.
mY RATING 4.5

CALLING OUT FOR YOU! (aka INDIAN BRIDE)
Gunder Jomann, a quiet, middle-aged man from a peaceful Norwegian community, meets Poona on a trip to India and the two agree to marry. Gunder returns home to prepare for her arrival, but the day Poona is due to arrive, he is summoned to the hospital as his sister has been involved in a car crash. The driver sent to collect Poona in Gunder’s place fails to meet her. Then the body of an Indian woman matching Poona’s description is found in a cornfield on the edge of the community and a murder enquiry is set underway. This baffling mystery — for what motive could there be to bludgeon a newly arrived foreigner to death — sends shock waves through the community. Inspector Sejer and Skarre are called in to investigate. Increasing suspicion surrounds people’s mundane daily activities, and even when one man’s confession seems to tie up all the loose ends, there remains the uneasy feeling that all is not as simple as it first appears. published in 2001, not translated until 2005.
My rating: 5

Review: BROKEN, Karin Fossum

Harvill Secker, 2008, ISBN 978-1-846-55061-4, 264 pages.
Translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.
Published in Norwegian in 2006

The author sits at her desk staring out at the long queue of people waiting on the drive outside her house. They stand there in the shadows, waiting to become characters in her book, for their stories to be told. That night, while she sleeps, one of the characters jumps the queue, enters her house, and sits in the chair by her bed.

The author agrees to tell his story next. She gives him a name, and begins to tell his story. But the reader knows Alvar has no story until the author creates it. Alvar Eide is forty-two years old, a bachelor, who works in an art gallery. His father had lived to only fifty-three and Alvar imagines that he himself has only eleven years to live. Alvar is a little old-fashioned both in his attitudes and his appearance about which he is fastidious. He doesn't relate to people very well, which is why he doesn't know how to handle the young girl, a homeless drug addict who works out how to get him to give her money. She steals a door key from him so she can let herself in and out of his house whenever she wants to.

The novel is told on two levels. Alvar visits the author whenever he feels that he isn't coping, or when he doesn't feel she is carrying out her part of their relationship properly. Ultimately the author is the one who has control over what happens to Alvar. She says early on that she is not god, but in terms of Alvar's life she is. Alvar knows that the author's computer is full of drafts, of stories lying incomplete and he is frightened that she will forget about him. She on the other hand creates situations that will test Alvar and some of these tests he fails miserably.

In BROKEN Karin Fossum plays with the reader's mind. We wonder how much free will Alvar really has. The idea that he is a fiction of the author's creation is a challenging one, even though we know it to be true. Fossum dabbles in metaphysics, with the very nature of Alvar's existence. We know that authors create their characters, but how real are they to the author who created them? The author and Alvar even discuss the methods by which he might die. We see some of the dilemmas that an author faces in bringing a novel to publication, how she lives and breathes through the characters that she creates, how they take on a life of their own.

For those who have enjoyed Fossum's Inspector Sejer series, this stand-alone is very different. Although someone does die, some would not label it crime fiction. For that reason some Sejer fans will be disappointed. For my part, I prefer the Sejer series. BROKEN made me feel as if I was performing mental gymnastics.

My rating: 4.3

The Inspector Sejer novels from the Norwegian "Queen of Crime" are
1. Don't Look Back (2002)
2. He Who Fears the Wolf (2003)
3. When the Devil Holds the Candle (2004)
4. Calling Out For You (2005)
aka The Indian Bride
5. Black Seconds (2007)

Probably because of the connection established between the author and the characters of the story, BROKEN reminded me of a book I read years ago: THE ATHENIAN MURDERS by Jose Carlos Somoza.
The synopsis below is courtesy of Fantastic Fiction.
In ancient Athens, one of the pupils of Plato's Academy is found dead. His idealistic teacher Diagoras is convinced the pupil's death is not as accidental as it appears, and asks the famous Heracles Pontor, the "Decipherer of Enigmas," to investigate. As the death toll rises, the two men find themselves drawn into the dangerous underworld of the Athenian aristocracy, risking their own lives to solve the riddle of these young men's deaths. Simultaneously, a second plot unfolds: that of the modern-day translator of the ancient text, who, as he proceeds with his work, becomes convinced that the original author has hidden a second meaning in the text, one that can be interpreted through certain repeated words and images. As the story advances, however, the translator is alarmed to discover references to himself, which seem to address him personally in an increasingly menacing fashion.

Favourite Authors - #5 Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine

The idea of this mini-project is to list crime fiction authors that I look forward to reading. These are authors that I will buy without question if I see a title I haven't yet read. So in a sense to give them a number is deceptive. I would imagine that there are at least 20 authors in my database who come into this category. It also gives me a chance to print some of my mini-reviews that haven't been published before. This is a project that I will continue randomly throughout 2008.

Previously listed

• #1 Peter Lovesey
• #2 Karin Fossum
• #3 Donna Leon
• #4 Simon Brett
  

One of the advantages with Ruth Rendell is that she writes under 2 names, and writes the Wexford series, and stand-alones.
Every respectable library will have lots of titles.
I've listed the records in my database in publication order.
If you want a full list of her remarkable output see Fantastic Fiction:
Ruth Rendell
Barbara Vine
Output has slowed down in recent years, but there are omnibus re-printings to look for.
Ruth Rendell is 78 this year (2008)
My enjoyment is indicated by my ratings, a value with a maximum of 5.0

Ruth Rendell titles

THE FEVER TREE AND OTHER STORIES (1982), 4.8
Contains 11 stories: The Fever Tree, The Dreadful Day Of Judgement, A Glowing Future, An Outside Interest, A Case Of Coincidence, Thornapple' (novella), May And June, A Needle For The Devil, Front Seat, Paintbox Place and The Wrong Category.

END IN TEARS (2005), 4.8
In the early hours of the morning George Marshalson is waiting anxiously for his young daughter to come home. His discovery of her body at dawn not far from the house is the beginning of a new case for Reg Wexford and the Kingsmarkham CID team. Neither Reg nor his assistant Mike Burden are getting any younger and both are a bit old-fashioned in their attitudes and their policing methods. In this, the 20th book in the Wexford series that began in 1964, award winning author Ruth Rendell introduces the new face of policing in Britain in the persons of the latest additions to the team, Bal and Hannah. And again Rendell gives this book a contemporary setting by weaving into it a theme that has been of world-wide community concern. The Wexford family interest continues too when daughter Sylvia becomes pregnant by her ex-husband.

THE WATER'S LOVELY (2006), 4.7
Ruth Rendell never disappoints me. Sisters Ismay and Heather Sealand live in the bottom half of a house in suburban London and their mother and aunt live in the upper floor. Nine years before their stepfather Guy was drowned in the bath upstairs and Ismay and her mother have always thought Heather was responsible, although they hid their suspicions from the police, and gave Heather, 11 at the time, an alibi. After the verdict of accidental drowning, the matter was never discussed again but Ismay has always thought of Heather as a murderer. She thinks Heather drowned Guy in order to protect her. Ismay wonders whether she should warn Heather's new friend Edmund about Heather's possessiveness.

NOT IN THE FLESH (2007), 4.8
Honey the dog is a wonderful hunter for truffles. But this time she unearths something even less savoury - a human hand. Another case for the inveterate duo Reg Wexford and Mike Burden. The body is male, and has been there for over 10 years, wrapped in a purple bed sheet. In this story Reg Wexford seems to be a little less clearly drawn and we learn more about the dynamics of the team he works with. The plot is a spider web of threads. It is all about degrees of separation, those threads that draw us together. And running through all the murder mysteries, missing persons and threads of deception, something else Rendell has on her mind - female circumcision, ritual genital mutilation of young immigrant children, providing a rich undercurrent, showing Rendell as aware of the issues of her times as ever.

COLLECTED STORIES (2007), 4.6
Ruth Rendell's COLLECTED STORIES is an omnibus of three previously published collections: The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories (1976), Means of Evil and Other Stories (1979), and The Fever Tree and Other Stories (1982). Some of the stories have appeared individually and in other collections, all over twenty-five years ago. Many of them were first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Few authors specialise in the short story today, and each of these twenty-seven stories convinces the reader what a consummate writer of this genre Rendell is. She explores a range of topics: the boy abducted by a Man, the false evidence that convicts a man of murder, a boy's distillation of a vegetable poison, death by knitting needle, the serial killer charged with a murder he didn't commit, the killer-for-hire foiled by his love of dogs, the woman who tried suicide once too often, and more. Most of the stories stand alone, but the five in Means of Evil and Other Stories all feature Reg Wexford and Mike Burden, Rendell's central characters from the much loved Wexford series.

Writing as Barbara Vine

NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG (1994), 4.0
Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word about the murder. But then the letters started to arrive, giving intimate details of the murder. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done.

THE MINOTAUR (2005), 5.0
An excellent read. Always has you on the edge of your seat with hints about what is to come. It is the 1960s, but the “swinging sixties” revolution hasn't quite reached rural England. In an attempt to be closer to her English boyfriend, Kerstin Kvist accepts a job with the Cosway matriarch; her three unmarried daughters; and her son, John, a sad, self-absorbed figure in his thirties who haunts the grand house of Lydstep Old Hall, deep in the Essex countryside. There is a fourth daughter, too—a widow herself and apparently quite rich—who comes and goes infrequently, with ill-disguised contempt for the others. Then, just as Kerstin is beginning to figure out the odd family, a stranger moves into the village, his very presence setting the Cosways on a path to self-destruction.

Missing Children

I am currently reading THE PURE IN HEART by Susan Hill. #2 in the Simon Serrailler series. The first real case in the book is the apparent kidnapping of a 9 year old boy as he stands on the footpath outside his home waiting for his ride to school.
And as Serrailler's assistant Detective Sergeant Nathan Coates thinks..
What can it be like to go out one morning and everything's hunky-dory, and at the end of the day, wham, your kid's gone, just... gone? Jesus.

Lying in bed last night, I started thinking about books that I've read that tackled this theme. A mental trawl of my database brought up these..

INVOLUNTARY WITNESS by Gianrico Carofiglio
Not an optimistic one because the boy is found dead and so the book is about the attempt to lay the blame.
A Senegalese peddlar working on the beaches of Bari in southern Italy has been accused of the murder of a young boy, whose body was found down a well 12 kilometers away. Guido Guerrieri, Counsel for the Defence, originally advises the accused to opt for a "short trial", a method in which the accused basically pleads guilty and gets a reduced sentence because of that. But the accused says he is not guilty and although he thinks the case is hopeless Guido also believes him. This novel is an Italian prize winner, translated into English. It is Carofiglio's debut novel, won a number of literary awards, and also already become the basis for an Italian TV series. Very different view of Italian justice system to Donna Leon. But then Bari is not Venice.

Then of course IN THE WOODS by Tana French
Three 12 years olds are playing in the woods at Knocknaree and then there is one. The other two vanish and the remaining child Adam Ryan is in a catatonic state and remembers nothing. Life goes on but the two children are never found and Adam Ryan becomes detective Rob Ryan. Twenty years on the woods are to be demolished to make way for a motorway. When protesters assert that the woods are of archaelogical significance they are given time to excavate and to retrieve anything of value. Then the body of a young girl is found near the excavation site, and Rob Ryan is part of the team assigned the case. He knows he should declare his conflict of interest but he doesn't. Gradually as the investigation develops the layers of his memory onion peel back and he gets closer to the truth. A strong debut novel that tackles an idea others have tackled before

BLACK SECONDS by Karin Fossum
Helga Joner has often thought that her nine year old daughter Ida is too good to be true, too good to last. The disappearance of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. When Ida fails to arrive home from the shop, Helga feels she had been rehearsing the moment for years. First Helga and her sister Ruth scour the streets where they might find Ida, without success, and then they ring the police. Helga feels that somehow she has tempted fate, setting off an inevitable chain of events.
When Inspector Konrad Sejer arrives at her house, Helga feels instinctively that he will find Ida. As time passes Sejer becomes concerned that no trace has been found of Ida or the bright yellow bicycle she rode to the shop. One hundred and fifty volunteers search for Ida without success. Eight days later there are still no clues, the search is to be scaled down, and a chance comment by Helga to Sejer gives them something new to work on.

from a couple of years back in my reading
NO TRACE by Barry Maitland
In this work Maitland turns his focus on an artistic community where one of the leading artists, Gabriel Rudd, has won England’s most controversial art awards, the Turner Prize, with a painting he completed after the death of his wife. Now his daughter has disappeared, and two other young girls have also gone missing at the same time. Rudd begins to work on an art installation based on the grief he is experiencing for his lost daughter Tracey.

and ON BEULAH HEIGHT by Reginald Hill
Andy Dalziel's worst case was when 3 little girls went missing at Dendale, a small community where a dam was being built. They were never found and Benny Lightfoot, the man suspected of their disappearance, disappeared without trace too. The valley was flooded and the crime was never solved. Most of the families moved into a neighbouring valley, and now, 15 years on, another little girl has gone missing. But little Betsy Lightfoot had survived 15 years ago, and now she has come back to the area. She was 7 years old when Dendale was drowned. And it seems too that Benny is back.