az- Don't Look Back - by Karin Fossum, trans. Felicity David:
From Publishers Weekly:
In Fossum's moody and subtle U.S. debut, the fifth in her Inspector Sejer series*, the popular Norwegian mystery writer displays her mastery of psychological suspense. Richly drawn characters reveal much about Norwegian society, though the setting, a picturesque valley town northwest of Oslo, isn't distinctive. A little girl disappears from her middle-class neighborhood, then returns home unharmed. Meanwhile, the search party discovers the nude corpse of a teenager, Annie Holland, and Fossum seamlessly shifts the story to a murder investigation, using several points of view to create red herrings that add to the suspense. Both girls lived in the same claustrophobic community where the residents claim to know one another but, naturally, don't really. With few clues and no witnesses, seasoned Inspector Konrad Sejer and his eager young assistant Jacob Skarre must uncover the hidden relationships and secrets they hope will lead to the killer of the well-liked, talented Annie. When they learn that the victim's behavior changed suddenly eight months earlier after a child she babysat died by accident, the plot shifts course again and drives to a stunning conclusion and ominous final scene.
ooh sounds good. great.
*Intuitive, introspective Sejer is a widower who lives alone with his dog and still grieves for his late wife. a fine character.

looking up Fossum bcs at K's read:
The New Yorker: Books: Body Count -- In a Danish novel, office politics can be murder.
re “The Exception” (Jul07; Doubleday; $26); by Jungersen, Christian
...some of the best recent Nordic writing has been detective fiction, including Karin Fossum’s unsettling mysteries set in Norway’s welfare state.

day or two ago I picked up R Is For Ricochet (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries)-by Sue Grafton
from free shelf. did not engross me, but not bad. looked it up, it's the second-to-most-recent. S is out in paper. T is on way in hardcover this December.
currently curious about mystery/detective genre. I suppose bcs of Veronica Mars. bcs looking to be engrossed in something.


and I like this, on page I opened to of poetry galley from Ahsata Press case sensitive p8:
What is the appeal of a mystery? Someone is looking for something,
actively
I have several of these Ahsahta poetry galleys, we get them regularly, I notice them in the Napoleon room: slim volumes, 8x6ish, usually white cover with b&w illustration on it.
from Boise State University via Small Press Distribution.
az- case sensitive (New Series #14) 0 Kate Greenstreet:
..an unexplained house awaits its occupant on the opposite coast. .. distance through which the driver-writer .. collage of mentors M. Curie, Modersohn-Becker, and L. Niedecker .. lower limit of an ongoing mystery story vernacularized through her car's CD speakers.
this rvw seems aiming to be poetic but seems unmeaningfully incoherent. vernacularized seems to be used to mean put into speech, which is not what it means. unless it is being put into notably plain local speech. and I left out the rest words I d n like.
ah, better: Greenstreet's narrative experiment conjures a character whose mentors, dreams, and reading habits (a biography of Marie Curie, a mystery novel on tape, the letters of Lorine Niedecker) help us know her.
& : The fifth segment, "Diplomacy," becomes both a fragmentary whodunit and a meditation on the poet's house, as if to ask where the self really resides.


8/6/07 found one of Fossum's books at Powell's, it did not appeal, too ambiguous & dark the scene in opening pages. sejer not around til many pages in, looks like.
and over this past weekend I read Trace by Patricia Cornwell, featuring Kay Scarpetta. finished it, but didn't care for it. not bad writing. but no homey appeal
like Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, who tells you about herself at the outset, and presents the case, and then tells you pretty much everything she does until the case is over. including boring phone calls and groceries and whatever. it's all upfront, you just live with her. and her 86+ year old landlord and eat dinner at Rosie's. so I like it. I got from Powells and read C is for Corpse and A is for Alibi.
then I got the Cornwell which was much more crime-horror, with chapters jumping among characters, including the psychobadguy sitting on a lawn chair in his rented room talking to his dead mom. and it was not all upfront, did not follow anyone, I did not get to know anyone. so eh. my dad says the earlier scarpetta novels (first was Postmortem) were more homey and it does look like rvwrs on az many think that the later ones - Trace is #13 - are not as good, bcs less Scarpetta. so if I happen on a free early one I'll look at it but that's all.
also got an old paperback of Raymond Chandler (who I may have only just learned is not Raymond Carver what we talk about when we talk about love) Lady in the Lake. and I tht might be too stylized for me, too hoighty toity when I want straightforward. but seems fun. went right into the case. and I like the talk: a dark-haired lovely. a little blonde kitten in an office where they don't care about kittens. "used to call him Violet McGee on account of he ate violet pastilles. tall man, grey hair, a mouth for kissing babies. last seen wearing a blue suit and brown shoes." etc. K mentioned Chandler - the detective Philip Marlowe. and rg mentioned him too.