WHEN THE DEVIL HOLDS THE CANDLE

This Scandinavian novel of psychological horror is more closely kin to, say, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT than to your average police procedural. Two teenaged Norwegian slackers try to mug a young mother and inadvertently cause an accident in which her baby is gravely injured. They then go on to try to rob somebody right, in a crime that goes even more drastically wrong. The narrative moves in and out of the heads of the punks, their victims, their parents, and the inspector as David Rintoul expertly conveys the building puzzlement, tension, fear, desperation, rage, and finally madness of the characters here tangled together. Rintoul's subtlety and control are sensational; not simply clever and dark, his performance makes this a horrifying little masterpiece. B.G. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 06/ JAN 07]