Smoke Screen - Jorn Lier Horst & Thomas Enger

Another Horst/Enger collaboration in the Blix/Ramm series.   I can't decide if it comes before or after Unhinged (see below) and that's a good sign, showing you can start anywhere in the run.   It's another cracking idea: a bomb goes off in the centre of Oslo on New Year's Eve; Blix is on duty, Emma Ramm is there because she has a funny feeling.   Blix rescues one victim from the river.   She's carrying ID belonging to Ruth-Kristine Smeplass, whose daughter Patricia was snatched ten years ago and never found.   Patricia's father Christer Storm Isaksen killed a man who said he was involved; Blix was there when he did it.   Now Christer, in gaol but coming to the end of his sentence, has received a photograph which he believes shows Patricia now aged eleven.

Things get even more complicated.   Emma has suffered a personal loss in the bombing.  Only work can keep her occupied.   Blix believes Ruth-Kristine was the target of the bomber.   He digs deeper into the kidnapping.   It's a great yarn, effectively told.   The collaboration works really well.   It all builds nicely towards---

And then, I'm afraid to say, the climax is something of a disappointment.   Plot-wise, it is the only possible ending, but it is poorly done and a pointless epilogue doesn't help.   Even so, Smoke Screen was an enthralling read and not only will I read the next Horst/Enger when I come across it, I saw on social media yesterday that Enger has collaborated with someone else, a lead I shall definitely be pursuing.

Unhinged - Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger

 What is it with senior Norwegian police officers and their pesky daughters who keep getting kidnapped by the deranged?   I can explain that.   It's not Norwegians per se; it's Jorn Lier Horst's personal hang-up which he has brought over to this collaboration with Thomas Enger, one of whose books I read so long ago that I can't remember if he has any similar baggage.

That said, the device is taken considerably further in Unhinged.   Iselin Blix is a trainee detective, so her involvement is less awkward.   She lodges with her father's protegee Sofia Kovic.   Kovic is looking into a few cold cases.   Someone breaks into the flat and executes her.   He also attacks Iselin but she manages to fight him off.   Alexander Blix is giving a speech to a class of students, which means he misses a number of telephone calls about the attack.   He is late to the scene.   He takes charge of the investigation.

Emma Ramm is a news blogger who has obviously worked with Blix in previous novels.   She is friends with both Kovic and Iselin.   There is no suggestion of a romantic interest with Blix.   She is much younger than him.   Indeed he rescued her from something horrible when she was five.   In so doing, he killed one of her abusers. 

So Blix asks Emma to accompany Iselin to the regular police trauma counsellor.   The session finishes early and Emma is not in the waiting room when Iselin leaves.   Iselin wanders out onto the street and is snatched in broad daylight, bundled into a stolen car and driven away.   Emma and Blix both miss the speeding vehicle by seconds.

The outcome of all this is only one half of the book.  The first half is framed by Blix's interrogation by Bjarne Brogeland of Kripos, the National Criminal Investigation Service.   This is a proper grilling - Bliz is the one under investigation, having apparently shot and killed someone else.  The device is really well used and adds another level of intrigue and darkness to events.

The second half is the hunt for those behind the murders and abduction.   it is well enough handled and Emma plays a more significant role, but I have to say it is not as thrilling as the first half.   Overall, though, I really enjoyed Unhinged.   A proper police thriller that is properly thrilling.    I shall certainly look out for more.   Apparently Death Deserved was the first Blix/Ramm novel, Smoke Screen second.

PS: Scarred was the Thomas Enger novel I reviewed on this blog back in February 2015.   I didn't much like it but I did admire Enger's writing style.

Faithless - Kjell Ola Dahl

This is my first encounter with Kjell Ola Dahl and his Oslo detectives, Frolich and Gunnarstranda. Given it is a series of twelve and Faithless is number ten, it goes without saying there is a great deal of back story I am not familiar with. Some of it stands out - one of the background cops has converted to Islam - but none of it gets in the way. It just makes me want to read more.


Faithless (a title wholly irrelevant to the story) has two strands. A young African student newly arrived in Oslo goes missing, and somebody murders Veronika, the fiancée of Frolich's childhood friend Karl Anders Fransgard - a day after Frolich arrests her for drug possession and twelve hours or so before he realises who she is at Karl Anders' party. Frank then goes home with Veronika's best friend Janne, who turns out to be Karl Anders' ex and his alibi for the murder. Frolich tries to recuse himself from the investigation but Gunnarsranda can't spare him.


I liked Faithless because, for all the characters' idiosyncrasies, it is a proper police procedural. The other big Norwegian crime writer, Jo Nesbo, makes his protagonist Harry Hole so horrible that he is invariably kicked off the case and has to solve the crime in his own way. The characters are well drawn. In this story Frolich features much more than Gunnarstranda so we get to know him better. I have no idea if that is always the case but will certainly find out. Gunnarstranda's occasional interventions here just make him more enigmatic and interesting. Frolich had a big finish in this story and I am keen to find out what happens to him next. Fortunately the next in the series, The Ice Swimmer, is available in English. The latest, Courier, was published this week.


I find it inexplicable that the series is being published out of order in the UK. Faithless is the fifth of seven currently available here, which would make sense if they were only publishing the later, fully fledged instalments - but the fourth to appear in English was Ola Dahl's first novel, Lethal Investments, dating all the way back to 1993! The good news is that they are all translated by Don Bartlett, who succeeds in the hardest task for any translator - making you forget it's a translation. Ola Dahl may not be best-served by Orenda Books and their terrible covers but Bartlett serves him very well indeed.

Blood on Snow - Jo Nesbo

Given that Midnight Sun is billed as Blood On Snow 2, it comes as no suprise that Blood On Snow itself is the precursor of Midnight Sun - the reason Olav runs away to the deep north. The set up is ingenious, worthy of James M Cain. Olav, whose only talent is as a fixer, is ordered by his gangster boss to kill the boss's much younger wife. Olav, of course, falls for the wife, which means doing a deal with his boss's rival, the Fisherman (who ultimately pursues him to the deep north in Part 2). The twists are obvious in hindsight, but Nesbo's great gift is the ability to slide them past you, unnoticed, as you read. Olav is a much more interesting character here than in Midnight Sun - a psychopath whose heart is in the right place. It sounds bizarre but it works.

Again, a very slim volume in which irrelevant detail is pared to the bone.  I liked it better than Midnight Sun. It is not a patch on Headhunters and inferior to perhaps half the Harry Hole Oslo series.