Broken
A Mystery
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An inventively twisted psychological thriller from “a master of the slow build, the controlled burn” (Chicago Tribune).
In the middle of the night, a man breaks into a woman’s house, finds her bedroom, and wakes her up. She’s the author who could save his soul by telling his story. He’s one of many characters waiting their turn—except now he’s cut the line. After all, she could die soon, leaving him lost forever. He refuses to leave until she gives him a name. And so his story begins . . .
Alvar Eide, forty-two and single, works in an art gallery. He maintains a quiet life—until one icy winter morning when a drug-addicted young woman walks into his gallery to escape the cold. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. Soon after, she appears on his doorstep. The author is finally telling his story . . . but she never promised a happy ending.
Broken is an unconventional, disturbing, and thought-provoking mystery from a master of the form, and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for her crime novel The Indian Bride.
“Fossum crafts remarkably incisive psychological suspense: novels that carry the headlong momentum of thrillers and the acuity and weight of literary fiction.” —The Washington Post Book World
“I always eagerly await a new novel from Karin Fossum.” —Ruth Rendell
“Claustrophobic and intense.” —The Independent (UK)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In an odd departure from her Inspector Sejer series, Norwegian crime novelist Fossum (The Water's Edge) tells the story of a writer confronted by a character of her own creation. As the nameless female narrator explains, the characters for her future novels line up in her driveway in roughly the order she'll write their tales. One night, a man she names Alvar Eide currently second in line cuts to the front and demands his story be told. Fossum alternates between Eide's sedate life near Drammen, where he works in an art gallery, and his discussions with his "creator" about how certain events should play out. The first hint of tension appears in the form of an enigmatic 18-year-old girl, who comes into the gallery one winter afternoon and strikes up a conversation with Eide. Despite an intriguing concept, Fossum never fully sheds the artificiality of a writer writing about a writer writing.
