Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer novels take place in rural communities north of Oslo, making them different from the city settings favored by Anne Holt, K. O. Dahl and Jo Nesbo.  Konrad Sejer is a middle-aged widower when we first meet him—thoughtful and kind and a bit melancholy.  His young assistant Jacob Skarre is grateful to be working and learning from such a successful, experienced policeman.  His proficiency increases with each case.   As the series continues, Sejer eventually he meets an attractive woman who returns his affection.   Fossum’s first published work was a book of poems, so the crisp and colorful prose of her crime novels is not surprising.  Her experience working in hospitals with addicts and the mentally ill, gives authority to her portrayal of the sad and demented characters at the heart of her novels.  Though Fossum has been called the “Queen of Crime”, her Sejer novels are psychological suspense, rather than mysteries.  The Caller (Houghton Mifflin, 8/2012) is the eighth book in the series.   Among the many unsettling events it concerns are: a sleeping baby is splashed with blood, an old woman reads her own obituary, and a man suffering from ALS is approached by a mortuary before he is dead.

–posted   8/13/2012