Just nine days shy of her eleventh birthday, Ida Joner leaves her home in Southern Norway one afternoon on an errand, promising her ever-vigilant mother, Helga, to return promptly. The title derives from the time immediately after Helga becomes aware that her daughter is inordinately late: “She had always thought of seconds as tiny metallic dots; now they turned into heavy black drops and she felt them fall one by one.”
As the ensuing hours and then days pass, everyone is questioned: Ida’s father and his brothers and their sons, and Helga’s sister, Ruth, and Ruth’s 12-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son, who seems preoccupied with a minor accident which has damaged his precious car – he’s just recently passed his driving test. Then there is a rather gruff and strange man: Emil Johannes Mork, who doesn’t seem to be able to talk other than to say the word “No” and drive about in a three-wheeled vehicle with motorcycle handlebars and a small trailer attached. [Though fifty-two years old, Emil’s seventy-three-year-old mother comes to his house weekly to keep it clean and tidy.] No one can be found who saw Ida from the time she left her home.
The case is assigned to Inspector Konrad Sejer, the protagonist of this series. A very tall, gray-haired man in his fifties, he inspires confidence. “He moved quietly and thoughtfully, as if nothing in the world could unsettle him, Helga thought, He’s exactly what I need. He’ll fix this, because that’s his job, he’s done this before.” But this, he thinks, is a case unlike any he’s ever had. Sejer is a wonderful protagonist. A widower, he has a grown daughter presently in the US, and a very old, beloved dog who he dreads having to put down, though he knows this is what he will shortly have to do, as every movement is a trial for the animal.
The book describes a mother’s worst nightmare – to lose a child, or to think a child capable of murder – either one impossible to imagine. A fast read, “Black Seconds” is a fine mystery, as well as a psychological study of the highest order.
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Gloria Feit