Review of "Eva's Eye" [59]

Eva's Eye by Karin Fossum
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN
8/6/2013, 36 pages

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A mother, Eva, and her daughter walk along the river and ,shockingly, come upon the body of a man in the water. Except the woman does not seem that shocked, and only pretends to call the police to report what they saw to placate her daughter.
How very odd.

Of course, someone else reports the body and the dead man is soon identified as Egil, a brewery worker who disappeared four months ago after he had gone out to sell his car to a mysterious buyer. And how odd that Eva was also childhood friends with another woman that was found dead in her apartment, murdered, just days before the man who was found floating disappeared. Also, what is it with her daughter's frequent comments about how they are now financially better off than they were a short time ago.
Any fan of good mysteries does not believe in coincidences and neither does a good detective like Inspector Sejer.

I have read several of the books in the Inspector Sejer series, but I must say this one, the first, at last translated and published in English, made more of an impression than some of the others.Yes, it is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, these series being translated out of order...
Happily now, readers can now start at the beginning and be introduced to Sejer properly, because this is a fine place to start. We find out how his beloved wife died, how his daughter just returned from Africa with her husband and a new grandson. He met his doggie and go skydiving with him, an interesting hobby.

In many ways this is a low key book, small facts being gradually revealed, connections becoming obvious, all moving to what is a rather sad but inevitable ending. Sejer is a man that understands such things. He is a very solid and believable man, someone you trust as the reader to do the best that can be done and yet allow justice to prevail.
Personally, I am off to check out some others in the series that I have missed.

A solid, well written, very enjoyable mystery.

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My thanks to Amazon Vine and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book.

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