Literature and Fiction · Paperback

Invisible Hands

Norwegian title: Usynlige hender

Stig Sæterbakken

Police Inspector Kristian Wold has been assigned the year-old, unsolved case of a missing person. There is no mistaking the message from his superiors: this is to be the last ditch attempt in finding the person before the case is dropped.

Nonetheless, Kristian's conscience forces him to agree to meet Inger Danielsen, the mother of the 14-year-old girl who has disappeared. It is to be a meeting that will have unexpected consequences for them both. While Kristian feels committed to continuing an investigation that has so far proved fruitless, an exciting intimacy is also developing between him and the mother. Inevitably, and against all the odds, the two are drawn to each other, with an unpleasant outcome in store.

'In a good, old-fashioned way Usynlige hender grips you from page one. It is a novel you read fast, and which you do not want to put down.'AFTENPOSTEN 'Stig Sæterbakken writes disturbingly well about desire, the crossing of moral boundaries and people you absolutely do not want to resemble.'DAGSAVISEN 'Usynlige hender is a very strong novel, written in a precise and economic language where each and every word has meaning and weight, where there are hardly any clichés, and where merciless passion takes care of the drive.'DAGBLADET

'The strength in Sæterbakken’s authorship lies in his ability to look deep. Deep into human inner life, history, hopes, dreams, darkness and longing.'MORGENBLADET ´A cruel stylist. Stig Sæterbakken shows the reader what morality really is. (...)He is extremely exact in his observations of our weak sides, the moments when our moral ideals and our moral behavior fall apart.'DAGENS NYHETER, Sweden 'In a chopped, precise language Sæterbakken dramatizes the entire relational-psychological circuit of idealizing, polarizing and evil integration. Less than a hardboiled, black detective story Usynlige hender is a novel which tests our ability to understand and forgive, while at the same time pushing the reader farther and farther out on morally boggy ground.'SVENSKA DAGBLADET, Sweden