The Water's Edge

By Karin Fossum

Reinhardt and Kristine Ris, a married couple, are out for a Sunday walk when they discover the body of a boy and see the figure of a man limping away. They alert the police, but not before Reinhardt, to Kristine’s horror, kneels down and takes photographs of the dead child with his cell phone. Inspectors Konrad Sejer and Jakob Skarre begin to make inquiries in the little town of Huseby. But then another boy disappears, and an explanation seems more remote than ever. Meanwhile, the Rises’ marriage unravels as Reinhardt becomes obsessed with the tragic events and his own part in them.
The Water’s Edge is a riveting portrayal of a community in turmoil from Karin Fossum, Norway’s “Queen of Crime.” This e-book includes a sample chapter of THE MURDER OF HARRIET KROHN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9780547488660

Karin Fossum

KARIN FOSSUM is the author of the internationally successful Inspector Konrad Sejer crime series. Her recent honors include a Gumshoe Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller. She lives in Norway.

Reviews for The Water's Edge

[lauralkeet · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer mysteries are usually well-crafted page-turners. The Water’s Edge is less suspenseful than previous books, but is overwhelmingly creepy. Sejer and his partner Jacob Skarre are called to investigate a child’s disappearance, and find the child has been killed by a pedophile. A couple out for a walk discover the crime, shortly after seeing a suspicious person leaving the scene. There’s little question he is the perpetrator. Sejer and Skarre have in-depth conversations about pedophilia, Fossum takes us into the mind of the perpetrator, and to be honest it was almost too much to take. I missed the scenes from previous books where Sejer is at home hanging out with his dog or his girlfriend, which provide both insight to the character and relief from the details of the crime. I’ll give Fossum props for a solid story, but am glad to put this one behind me.

[5eva5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A small boy is found dead and it is obvious that he has been sexually molested, which makes the parents in the village very anxious, but when a second boy goes missing, the anxiousness turns into frantic fear. Although the crime is very gruesome (obviously, as it involves children), there is no reveling in details, which I'm thankful for. It's also interesting to see how Fossum deals with explaining the thought-process of the molester and makes it make sense. The second mystery is solves in an unexpected way, which is good, but borders a little bit too close to out-of-the-blue. As always, Fossum fills her books with interesting characters that make every page well worth reading.

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fossum returns to the dangers of childhood in this story of missing children, two boys, one frail, found dead in the forest, one obese, not found at all. Again, the reader knows a little more than the detective for most of the book, and so the plot is more about how Sejer comes to know the truth, at least in the first case. The second is sadder, simpler, but in some ways just as horrible.Along the way we meet two mothers who handle their despair in entirely different ways, a husband and wife deeply affected by their participation as witnesses, and the fears in a community when children are lost.

[junipersun · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thankfully the narrator changed with different chapters. I cringed at the meekness of Kristine Ris. There was quite a complexity of people and possible culprits, altho (because of the chapters narrated by the perpetrator) it was also clear that none of them were the perpetrator. The second incident was more complexity--I didn't predict that ending.I kept confusing the 2 detectives (wish they're last names had started w/different letters). Their speculations as they tried to understand the perpetrator, sometimes on the mark, sometimes astray, were interesting reading. I wonder if the translator is Scots--wouldn't an American have translated "lake" instead of "loch"? Despite the internet, it is pretty difficult to find out anything about a translator.I will be looking for more books by this author.

[cameling_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If one didn't know better, one would assume from reading Fossum's crime mysteries, that murderers and paedophiles run amok in Norway. A couple, taking their weekly Sunday walk through Linde Forest, are brushed past by a man stumbling through the woods and later discover the body of a 7 year old boy under a tree, clad only in his t-shirt. The couple alert the police and provide a description of the man they saw as well as the car they saw him get into. As Inspector Sejer and Jacob Skarre begin their inquiries, they discover that a white car has been noticed by the children at a school to be slowly driving past every time the children are let out at the end of the school day. Notices are sent to parents to pick their children up rather than letting them make their own way home until the killer is found.In the course of their investigation, another child goes missing, and the pressure to find the killer mounts for Inspector Sejer.Without many clues to go on, except the DNA from semen from the dead boy, Inspector Sejer's investigation proceeds frustratingly slowly. They research paedophilia and consider previously convicted child sex offenders in the area. In the meantime, the relationship between the couple who found the dead boy starts to undergo a change. Fossum has great talent in subtly weaving in shorter intrigues about other characters without losing focus on the main plot and story. In this book, there is an unexpected twist at the end, making it a very satisfying read.

[ten_floors_up · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Intelligent, literate crime fiction that doesn't try to mug the reader or sensationalise the subject matter.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Inspector Sejer, yet again, is trying to find out what happened to a child who has disappeared, in a small Norwegian town. This isn't the first time Fossum has used this situation, but it does not grow boring. Her forte is the psychological thriller, where motive is all, and always ambiguous. Wonderful atmosphere, compelling prose.

[smik_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

#6 in the Inspector Sejer series.They were a couple, but they had been married for many years and they no longer held hands. The woman was wearing a raspberry red coat, the man a white windbreaker. He was constantly one step of her, tall, self-assured and fit. The woman watched him furtively while she contemplated her own thoughts.As they begin the return path of their usual Sunday afternoon walk in the woods near the lake, Kristine and Ris Reinhardt meet a man leaving the forest. Shortly after that they come across the body of a young boy naked from the waist down.Identifying the boy is not very difficult for Inspector Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre. He has already been reported missing by his anxious mother. Working out how he died is more difficult, as is locating his murderer.The search for the murderer almost takes a back seat to some of the issues that Fossum wanted to explore in this novel - why couples grow apart, how paedophiles are made, why something that is regarded as a sexual offence in one society has traditionally not been so in other cultures.The disappearance of another ten year old boy from the same school, this time a morbidly obese one, serves to complicate the murder investigation, and introduces other elements in the investigation of human behaviour.THE WATER'S EDGE is a relatively quick read but raises some disturbing social issues.

[bccjillster · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Again Fossum looks at pedophelia from a psychological view. A horrid topic but she is able to handle it without freaking the reader out. I don't know why she keeps picking this issue, but she explores it in a Rendell-like manner.

[austcrimefiction · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the things that I particularly love about really good crime fiction is the way that it highlights the human condition - warts and all. The thing I particularly love about Karin Fossum's books is the way that she explores the notion of the sad, the stupid, the moments in which things go awry. To my mind, there's something profoundly more sobering about the notion of momentary mistake or misjudgement - rather than the automatic presumption of evil.THE WATER'S EDGE tackles the difficult subject of the death of a child (and the disappearance of another). When Reinhardt and Kristine Ris briefly pass an agitated man at the start of one of their regular walks, they have no idea that they will need to remember that man, his appearance, his state of mind and his vehicle. They only realise that after they discover the body of a young boy in the woods, and Inspector Sejer starts asking a lot of questions. The circumstances of the boy's death appear to be indicating a dreadful fate for the little boy, although the exact cause of death remains a mystery for quite a while. Sejer's investigation takes on an even more sinister overtone when a second little boy disappears.Whilst the death of the little boy and the search for his attacker is paramount to Sejer, there's some interesting psychological exploration going on in THE WATER'S EDGE. Reinhardt and Kristine's marriage is a fragile affair to start off with, although Reinhardt's bull-headed stubbornness and self-involvement means he probably had no idea that Kristine has been having second thoughts about the relationship for a long time. As Reinhardt's voyeuristic reaction to the discover of the little boy becomes more and more extreme, it simply confirms for Kristine that her marriage has been a mistake. Add to that Reinhardt's refusal to have children and Kristine's increasing yearning for a child, and this is a relationship which is destined for problems. The portrayal of the affects of the boy's death in such a personal thing as the relationship of the hapless discoverers of the body poignantly draws a picture of how profound and unexpected the affects of murder can be.The other side of the story - the perpetrator is equally telling. As strange as this may seem, there's some room for compassion for the perpetrator of these acts - these moments of misjudgement. Lifelong damage, instant mistakes, the sad, the pathetic, the inexcusable, the stupid, the unwittingly cruel, shame and personal loathing. It applies equally to the death of a poor little boy, his body laid out with some care and reverence in the woods, as it does to another little boy - overweight, over-indulged, different, ashamed and shamed against, who has gone missing.