Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2012
256 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
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.
This is classic Fossum - and the critics are saying this is her best book since The Indian Bride.
"Fossum manages to create menace without a high body count, and strikes a realistic note by not allowing her investigators to wrap up everything." - Publishers Weekly
"With a focus on characters and the impacts of crime, Fossum's psychological thrillers will appeal, in particular, to fans of Anne Holt and Henning Mankell." - Booklist
"The publisher calls this Fossum's best since 2007's The Indian Bride - not that anyone thinks she's slipped." - Library Journal
"As in Ruth Rendell's books as Barbara Vine, readers are invited to watch helplessly as things go from bad to much, much worse for an unlucky group of basically nice people. If that's your pleasure, you could hardly do better." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Caller was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karin Fossum is the author of many novels and two collections of short
stories. Her crime novels featuring Inspector Sejer have been translated into sixteen languages.
Don't Look Back is the first of Fossum's police
procedurals to be published in the USA. The second in the series, He Who Fears The Wolf was published in 2005, and other translations of the series in English include Calling Out For You and Black Seconds.
Fossum has recently been honored with Gumshoe Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller. She lives in a small town in southeastern Norway.
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