Nine-year-old Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off to buy sweets. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, her mother, Helga, starts to worry. She phones the shop and various friends, but no one has seen her daughter. As the family being to search for Ida, Helga's worst nightmare becomes reality.
As the police are called in, hundreds of volunteers comb the neighbourhood, but there are no traces of the little girl, or her bike. As the relatives reach breaking point and the media frenzy begins, Inspector Sejer struggles to remains calm and reassuring. But usually missing children are found within forty-eight hours. Ida seems to have vanished without a trace.
1 of 2 copies available
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
June 2, 2011 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781446470220
- File size: 250132 KB
- Duration: 08:41:06
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Nine-year-old Ida Joner heads off to buy sweets on her shiny yellow bike. She never returns home. Thus begins the latest Inspector Sejer mystery by Norwegian writer Karin Fossum. British actor David Rintoul differentiates each character using distinct emotional tones. Rintoul uses his natural speaking voice throughout yet expertly imbues each character with an emotional timbre all his or her own. This style makes the narrative flow effortlessly and fits a mystery whose fabric lies more in the interpersonal struggles of the characters than in plot twists and the discovery of clues. Although some listeners may find the mystery a bit slow, Rintoul's stellar narration keeps the emotional tension running high from start to finish. J.T. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
April 14, 2008
Gumshoe Award–winner Fossum (When the Devil Holds the Candle
) once again wraps a blanket of methodical police work and infectious psychological tension around a relatively quiet crime in her fifth Inspector Sejer mystery to be made available in the U.S. When nine-year-old Ida Joner takes off for town (never named) on her new bike one afternoon and is never seen again, suspicion falls on Emil Johannes Mork, a silent, simple man. Emil, however, doesn’t appear to have the heart of a killer. The narrative shifts smoothly among those affected by the tragedy: Emil’s beleaguered mother, a good woman with little life of her own; a male cousin of the missing girl who may suffer some secret guilt; and, of course, Insp. Konrad Sejer and his younger colleague, Jacob Skarre. Sejer is a beautifully created character, a thoughtful, lonely man with great empathy. As he investigates Ida’s disappearance, it’s not so much the facts of the case as the impact of it on the people who surrounded the girl that fuel the story.
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