The day a full colostomy bag figures prominently in the plot of a mystery novel is the day when you realize that mysteries have reached a whole new kind of high-water mark — which is where they should have been all along, in the graphic land of guts and gurgling noises. Nothing’s cute or cozy about Fossum’s tale of a teen purse-snatcher, as gorgeous as the angel Gabriel, who meets his match in this latest among a new wave of Scandinavian psychological thrillers. Like the Edvard Munch paintings that also sprang from the author’s native Norway, it bares tortured souls with a relentlessly leisurely éclat. Like one of its main characters, you just keep wanting to squeeze your eyes shut.
Grade: A-