When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum
A baby dies as a result of two adolescents stealing a pocketbook from a stroller. Zipp and Andreas intend to commit another crime while being unaware of the severity of their previous one. Andreas enters the old woman’s home with his switchblade after they follow her inside. Zipp waits for his pal to emerge in the shadows.
The infant’s death and the alleged disappearance of a neighbourhood troublemaker are unrelated, according to Inspector Konrad Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre. While a result, the heart-stopping reality is revealed inside the old woman’s home as the commotion outside intensifies. Sejer, as unflappable as ever, probes beyond the surface of small-town peace in an effort to comprehend how and why violence decimates normal lives.
When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum
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When the Devil Holds the Candle, a delightfully off-the-beaten-path Scandinavian mystery that is as brilliantly written as it is quirky, is written by Norwegian novelist Karin Fossum who defies convention.
Andreas Winther, an aimless 18-year-old slacker who works a minimum-wage job and dabbles in minor crimes, is a common slacker. Irma Funder, who is about 60 years old, is a generally solitary divorcee with a distant adult son and memories of benign maltreatment as a youngster. A young woman strolls down Oslo’s seashore with her four-month-old baby. The unlikely meeting of these two very different lives, masterfully directed by Fossum’s deft hand, results in an explosive literary feast of suspense and depravity. The novel is so rich in conflicting themes, a sinister undercurrent, and the depth of characters that it almost spills over the edges of the short stories that attempt to contain it. This is a work of masterful darkness, a dark and psychologically unsettling story with no winners as it takes unexpected and strong turns to its end.
The antagonists in Fossum’s stories are improbable, and her settings are bizarre and eerily unsettling. Whereas the majority of authors deal in black-and-white, good-versus-evil, and a tidy conclusion, Karin Fossum’s brilliance comes from her rich ambiguity.
Fossum’s inspector Sejer is almost an observer, a keen but distant spectator who never seems really engaged with the crime at hand. Unlike other authors, who place their protagonist in the centre of the plot, revolving it around their whims, deductions, and forensic brilliance.
A very smart twist concludes the story. Undoubtedly talented and gifted with words, the author. Once more, Fossum tells a narrative of troubled, complicated characters and demonstrates the harmful, frequently unintended consequences that result when their paths cross. Fossum deftly leaves it up to her readers to decide if any of the persons involved receive justice.
