Blurb
One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault … crimes that Veum himself once stood wrongly accused of committing.
While the guilty men were apparently killed accidentally, Varg suspects that there is something more sinister at play … and that he’s on the death list of someone still at large.
Fearing for his life, Veum begins to investigate the old case, interviewing the victims of abuse and delving deeper into the brutal crimes, with shocking results. The wolves are no longer in the dark … they are at his door. And they want vengeance.
My Review
Thanks to Anne at Orenda for organising this blog tour and sending me a copy of this book. I haven’t read any of Staalesen’s work before but I do enjoy a good Nordic Noir, and Orenda has an excellent reputation for translating books. Plus the quality is always good. I am always happy to review for Orenda (hint. Hint. hint.)
It all starts with something incongruous – a grey VW Golf tries to run Varg Veum down on a cold January night. At a loose end, work wise, and ignored by the police, Varg decides to take on the investigation. Names from the past and a painful experience pop up in his initial investigations – deaths considered accidents that seem too coincidental. Thus, the investigation evolves from a road traffic accident to murder and a child pornography ring.
The plot is complex and keeps the reader guessing. The characters are well-defined and complex, with especial focus on Varg – who is the narrator – and his relationship with Solvi, his partner. This novel is far more than just noir crime fiction, it’s lyrically written; the plot is augmented with descriptions of the landscape and Veum’s musing about the world and social problems, while he investigates the child abuse ring. There’s something quintessentially Scandinavian about this sort of writing (I’ve read a lot of Nordic Noir in the last 20 years) – the plot is intertwined with a love of landscape and a philosophical social conscious. That’s as close as I can get to describing Nordic Noir, and Staalesen does it perfectly.
THE AUTHOR
One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Gunnar Staalesen was born in
Bergen, Norway in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with
Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg
Veum series. He is the author of over twenty-three titles, which have been
published in twenty-six countries and sold over five million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Epsen Seim, and a further series is currently being filmed.
Staalesen, who has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour) and the Petrona Award, and been shortlisted for the CWA Dagger, lives in Bergen with his wife.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 