Fossum's protagonist, Sejer, is a complex, lonely widower, still grieving over the loss of his wife (resembling, in some ways, Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, or P.D. James's Adam Dalgleish). In this, the second book, we learn a little bit more about him as we watch him slowly and shyly reach out to a potential new love (in the few slow moments when he's not racing to solve the crime and prevent further bloodshed) and we know that it will not be plain sailing for him in either his personal or public life.

Fossum leverages her series above the pack of conventional police procedurals by, firstly, taking us deep into the minds of her troubled characters, and secondly, by causing us to ask ourselves difficult questions - such as how society as a ...