A psychological thriller with Karin Fossum's trademark skill of looking realistically, terrifyingly, into the criminal mind. As always, the line between victim and killer is fine and easily crossed.
Zipp and Andreas are two youths with an array of petty crime to their name. When Andreas knocks a baby to the ground while snatching a handbag from the handle of its pram, Zipp becomes the unwitting accomplice to a murder. Moving on to their next target the two boys follow an old lady, Irma Funder, home one evening. Andreas enters her house armed, as always, with his flick-knife and intent on taking whatever he can. Zipp waits nervously outside. But his friend never reappears: Zipp will never see him alive again.
Fossum toys with the roles of victim and killer and pens the inner monologue of her characters to chilling effect. There are no red-herrings for the reader in this novel as the crime is played out on the page but it is the mental processes behind the sinister act that form the real pieces to this puzzle. They fall gradually into place as Irma and Andreas converse and reveal more information about themselves. We are forced to question the familiar stereotypes - people are not always what they seem and it is not always bad people who do bad things.
Whilst the reader may be party to the truth of this crime, the police remain flummoxed. There is no reason for Sejer and his colleague Skarre to see a connection between the infant's death and the reported disappearance of a town trouble-maker. With Zipp too frightened to come forward the police must wait for the evidence to present itself before they can begin to comprehend the unsettling nature of the case on their hands.
