Don't Look Back (2003)

A secluded mountain village is the unlikely setting for murder in the American debut of Norwegian crime author Fossum and her hero, Inspector Konrad Sejer. Equally unlikely is the victim: adored 15-year-old babysitter Annie Holland. Lacking an obvious suspect, the widowed Sejer and his young partner must delve beneath the town's placid surface into a roiling netherworld of alcohol, abuse, and dysfunction. Like the detective, the novel gets off to a slow start but bores in relentlessly, building to a heart-stopping conclusion that renders appalling acts chillingly comprehensible.