Regarding motivations for writing and bridging stratospheric distances, Karin Fossum reminds me a bit of myself. Having nothing to do in principle with the world of literature, one good day you write a poem, bad, without cadence. Then you move on to a passable story that entertains and surprises some improvised reader in your environment. At the end in the story number gazillion you discover that you have another gazillion pages written. Your first novel.
What of Karin Fossum, as a result of what I read and heard in different interviews, it was a bit like that, the discovery of writing as something that occupies a space in your existence, until it becomes a priority in your leisure. The luck of being able to make it a priority as a job is a matter for very few, the best in many cases and the lucky or well-sponsored in others...
Karin is one of the good writers, arriving as a "breath of fresh air" (she takes a hackneyed appeal) in the noir genre, so typical of this author's Nordic lands. And I, as a humble writer, when someone has gone through the same process and has made an effort to improve until they have won over so many readers, deep down I am happy. A good author who has taken the place of a writer with "fortune and star."
At the time I already outlined some of the latest novels by Karin Fossum, Do not look back and The light of the devil.
3 Recommended Novels By Karin Fossum
Devil's light
This novel is surprising in its deepest aspect. Evil like a flowing stream that can reach the most unsuspected people. The dark side as a natural space of coexistence of every human being who reconciles his good and his evil in a day-to-day battle.
Summary: There is something of a possible fatal destiny in coincidences, an aroma of coincidence as a possible turning point towards luck or the worst of misfortunes. From there this story is born. Two boys commit a robbery.
They are not two consummate criminals, although they do haunt juvenile delinquency far too often. Until that new day when they decide to steal again, in search of quick money ...
The robbery does not work out at all, they manage to get hold of a woman's bag, without realizing in their crazy escape that they have caused a fatal accident in which the son of the owner of the bag ends up dying. The sum of fatalities had only just unfolded like that dark fate that looms unexpectedly once you surrender to evil. Still possessed by that strange sense of triumphant crime, Andreas and Zipp don't end the day without looking for a new victim.
Coincidence or not, Irma, an old woman passes through their lives as a perfect target. They follow her home under the complicity of the night. Andreas prepares to raid the house of the lady, Zipp anxiously awaits his return with the new loot.
And so he stayed, waiting…. Konrad Sejer, in his role as inspector, knows of both cases, whose only temporal coincidence does not arouse in him the slightest suspicion. Perhaps if Konrad meditated on coincidences, on the chains that evil links once the game started, he could intuit that something strange links both cases.
Only the reader has the privilege of knowing that casual link that leads to any house, where a peaceful old lady lives, with her quiet life of television, crocheting and her visits to tidy up the basement.
Do not look back
Sometimes evil is shared. A small community can become a space ruled by fear or suspicion. And the price of truth ends up being too high.
Summary: In the case of this book Do not look back, the confusion comes even from the starting point. When little Ragnhild disappears, everyone sets out in search of her.
The girl returns for her foot, safe and sound hours later. He has only been at Raymond's house for a while, which has been the town's fool, but with a dark point, how could it be otherwise in a novel of this genre.
The widespread relief calms the spirits of the community, the small Norwegian town where the story takes place. Until Ragnhild comments on a lurid detail.
Suddenly he claims to have seen a naked woman near the lake. What he has actually seen is a corpse that the police will discover shortly after. The famous inspector Konrad Sejer, whom I already surrendered to in the novel The Devil's Light, begins probing staff.
The residents of the town offer their testimonies, alibis and other arguments in the face of the mysterious death of the young Annie Holland.
The problem is that Sejer encounters a multitude of potentials. Many neighbors could have killed the young woman. Stormy pasts that do not bode well in some cases or disconcerting behaviors in others.
Konrad navigates in confusion towards the resolution of the case while he lets us know the insides of many characters that, in their sinister extrapolation, we can recognize as our neighbors.
Eva's eye
The first novel that came to Spain by this author achieved the same effect as in any other place, it caused the birth of a legion of followers who enjoyed thinking about the publication of new works already published in other countries.
Summary: Eva Magnus, a young painter with little success, meets Maja, an old friend, who tries to convince her to earn a living as a prostitute and thus pay off her debts, each day more pressing.
Maja invites Eva to her house and encourages her to see through the crack in the door how the "work" is done. But suddenly the client and Maja get into a fight and Eva ends up with her friend's corpse in her hands. Thus begins a criminal whirlwind to which Eva, almost by chance, is drawn.
Inspector Sejer, when taking charge of the investigation, senses that the young artist knows more than what she says and that the answers to her questions lie in the secret life of Eva Magnus….
