Broken - Rilegato

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller (The Indian Bride, 2008)Gumshoe Prize (When the Devil Holds the Candle, 2007) International Praise for BROKEN: "Ambitious, tricksy...creepy Highsmithian atmospherics" --The Guardian (UK) "Fascinating and brilliant" --The Literary Review (UK) "Claustrophobic and intense...Descriptions-- of weather, interiors, a truly terrifying interlude with a domestic cat worthy of Poe-- are among the strongest features...[Broken is] an original exploration of the multiplicity of roles that not only characters but writers can play." --The Independent (UK) "The Norwegian writer has attracted acclaim for her dark, moody Inspector Sejer novels. The darkness remains, but Broken breaks the formula." --The Times (UK) "Fossum is often compared to Ruth Rendell; in Broken you can see why...Fossum moves the story back and forth between Alvar's tale and the relationship between author and character. The two plots are beautifully intertwined and the entire structure works to maintain suspense...Broken is great fun." --The Globe & Mail (Canada) Praise for BLACK SECONDS: "Nothing blows up in Karin Fossum’s new book, the fifth of her Inspector Sejer novels to make the journey from Norway to the United States, unless you count her characters’ worlds." --New York Times

"Fossum crafts remarkably incisive psychological suspense: novels that carry the headlong momentum of thrillers and the acuity and weight of literary fiction...[Black Seconds is] a novel of rare, hypnotic power." –Washington Post

"It doesn’t take a terrorist, a serial killer or some paranormal force to rattle the insular Norwegian communities Karin Fossum writes about in her quietly unnerving thrillers. In Black Seconds, all it takes is the disappearance of a child." –Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"One of the finest foreign mystery writers to hit these shores in recent years is Norway’s Karin Fossum...Just when you think you have it figured out, Fossum tosses you another bone, leading you off on a different course than you would have thought possible just a few pages earlier." –Bookpage

"A dark, intense, and impossible-to-put-down investigation...Sejer’s interrogation of the mute Emil is one of the most superb scenes in crime fiction...Essential reading." –Booklist (starred)

"Gumshoe Award-winner Fossum once again wraps a blanket of methodical police work and infectious psychological tension around a relatively quiet crime...Sejer is a beautifully created character, a thoughtful, lonely man with great empathy." –Publishers Weekly

PRAISE FOR THE INDIAN BRIDE: "So heart-stoppingly suspenseful that it was all I could do to keep myself from catapulting instantly to the bang-up final chapter . . . Terrific . . . Part of the remarkable emotional power of The Indian Bride comes from the lovingly drawn humanity of the victims . . . Fossum is a master at probing the plague of guilt that infects a community in which just about everyone has something they think they need to hide--everyone, that is, except the cunning psychopathic killer."—Washington Post Book World "An irresistible page-turner that's like a Nordic Sherlock Holmes story, with characters by Bergman and blood by Tarantino."—Entertainment Weekly
  

Karin Fossum was born in Sandefjord, a small city by the sea in the south of Norway. She published two books of poetry when she was in her twenties and then stopped writing until the age of thirty-eight. She has worked as a maid, taxi-driver, and shop clerk, and had jobs in an art galley and in hospitals and other institutions, helping drug addicts and the elderly. Her books featuring Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant, Jakob Skarre, are international bestsellers. Her first book to appear in English, "Don't Look Back", has recently been adapted for the cinema by Italian director Andrea Molaioli. In the US, she has been awarded the Gumshoe Prize (2007) for "When the Devil Holds the Candle" and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller (2008) for "The Indian Bride".