Tag: literature in translation

Bergen PI Varg Veum investigates two different cases that are uncannily similar to harrowing events that took place thirty-six years earlier…

Bergen Private Investigator Varg Veum is perplexed when two wildly different cases cross his desk at the same time. A lawyer, anxious to protect her privacy, asks Varg to find her sister, who has disappeared with her husband, seemingly without trace, while a ship carrying unknown cargo is heading towards the Norwegian coast, and the authorities need answers.

Varg immerses himself in the investigations, and it becomes clear that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling – and increasingly uncanny – similarities to events that took place thirty­six years earlier, when a woman and her saxophonist lover drove their car into the sea, in an apparent double suicide.

As Varg is drawn into a complex case involving star-crossed lovers, toxic waste and illegal immigrants, history seems determined to repeat itself in perfect detail … and at terrifying cost…

One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, 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 titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, star­ring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour). Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted for the award in 2019. He lives with his wife in Bergen.

My thoughts: this is another fascinating case for PI Varg Veum, with the present and past all tangled up. Berit hires him to quietly locate her sister and brother-in-law, who she says have disappeared. But Veum is interested in the suicide pact deaths of their mother and her lover, years before. Something isn’t adding up, is history repeating itself?

As he digs into the past and also searches for the missing couple, he has more questions than answers. Something strange is also happening at the missing man’s workplace – a shipping firm nowhere near a dock. A journalist has asked him to make a few enquiries into a ship, The Seagull, owned by the company.

As both cases weave themselves together and Veum seeks to separate them and get some answers, he’s almost killed. Accident or intent?

Gripping, thrilling, occasionally darkly funny, this is another fantastic outing for my increasingly favourite grumpy PI.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

The wealthy, powerful Snæberg clan has gathered for a family reunion at a futuristic hotel set amongst the dark lava flows of Iceland’s remote Snæfellsnes peninsula. Petra Snæberg, a successful interior designer, is anxious about the event, and her troubled teenage daughter, Lea, whose socialmedia presence has attracted the wrong kind of followers. Ageing carpenter Tryggvi is an outsider, only tolerated because he’s the boyfriend of Petra’s aunt, but he’s struggling to avoid alcohol because he knows what happens when he drinks … Humble hotel employee, Irma, is excited to meet this rich and famous family and observe them at close quarters … perhaps too close… As the weather deteriorates and the alcohol flows, one of the guests disappears, and it becomes clear that there is a prowler lurking in the dark. But is the real danger inside … within the family itself?

Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland to write her first novel. Combining writing with work as a stewardess and caring for her children, Eva finished her debut thriller The Creak on the Stairs, which was published in 2018. It became a bestseller in Iceland, going on to win the Blackbird Award. Published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, it became a digital number-one betseller in three countries, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2021. Girls Who Lie, the second book in the Forbidden Iceland series was shortlisted for the Petrona Award and the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and Night Shadows followed suit. With over 200,000 copies sold in English alone, Eva has become one of Iceland’s – and crimefiction’s – most highly regarded authors. She lives in Reyjavik with her husband and three children.

My thoughts: family reunions never end well, all those very different people linked only by blood or marriage, in one place, in this case a remote Icelandic hotel, with lots of booze. Recipe for disaster. Secrets bubble up, people are revealed to be more something other than they seem, old resentments flourish and nobody has a nice time. Except maybe the oblivious patriarch, although the heartburn and indigestion he’s due won’t be pleasant.

There’s a member of hotel staff with a secret connection to the family, a years old secret comes to light, an unhappy teenager, a miserable mother who won’t stop picking on her adult daughter. You can tell they don’t have these gatherings too often, better if they don’t speak at all in some cases.

Then there’s the dead body, the possibly missing girl and the police, summoned to the hotel to investigate. With all the suspects handily in one place, it shouldn’t take them long to sort out.

Moving back and forth between the police investigation and the weekend that proceeded it, we get a long hard look at the family, at their messy relationships, resentments and all the awkward moments you could want, as long as they’re not your relatives.

As a prequel to the Arkanes set Forbidden Iceland series, it’s only in the final moments the connection is made, this is much more about the wealthy Snæberg family and their chaos than it is about the police or the town. It works quite happily as a standalone, although I do recommend the rest of the series too.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.