Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
I am a bit of a late convert to Scandi-noir but once I had discovered Jussi Adler-Olsen, Jorn Lier Horst and Mads Peder Nordbo, I was hooked. As with everything though, it pays to be discriminating and Gunnar Staalesen was new to me. I was not to be disappointed!
On the face of it, this is a fairly standard Private Investigator crime-novel. Its hero, (and that of previous Staalsen books) Varg Veum, a loner, with a drink problem, and an anti-alcohol sub-cutaneous implant, is fresh out of rehab when he is offered a job house-sitting a rather plush home, whose owners are in Spain long-term. On arrival with his physiotherapist, who got him the job, a body is discovered in the swimming pool and having got it out ascertaining an assault prior to immersion, Varg Veum finds himself alone, the physio, a young woman in whom our hero was more than interested, having vanished.
Varg is, of course, a suspect in the murder and the disappearance and although his relationship with the investigating detective is rather rocky. Subsequent events including a re-investigation by Varg Veum of an unsolved missing child case provide links to environmental issues, domestic politics as well as the internecine squabblings of a powerful Norwegian family. The threads are apparently hopelessly tangled, connections tenuous and the ultimate solutions wholly unexpected.
Some of the most interesting characters are silent ones, the landscape and weather of Bergen and surrounding areas. In turns, menacing and brooding, sunlit and majestic, the fjords and mountains provide a very effective backdrop to the narrative and in places move it forward. The central character is very fond of self-reflection and analysis and there are echoes of Sam Spade and Mike Hammer in some of his internal monologues.
It took some time to realise that the book is set in the late 1980s/1990s as it was originally published in Norwegian 1991. Mobile phones, computers and the modern tools of detection such as cell site analysis, CCTV and DNA are not available to either PI or the local police. Varg’s contacts in the various civil agencies are therefore of greater significance than may be initially appreciated. The book also assumes that you have some knowledge of why Varg Veum’s name and reputation are known to other characters – allusions are made to ‘THAT Varg Veum’.
A standard PI novel is not what you get here, but instead, a carefully crafted narrative with more twists than an alpine road, one which is very satisfying to boot.
I will be looking out for the previous, as well as the subsequent, exploits of this most engaging character.
