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.

The Night Man - Jorn Lier Horst

Having enjoyed Wisting on TV I picked up one of the original novels with a few reservations.   Often (Wallander) the TV versions are nothing like the originals, albeit later novels sometimes come to resemble the TV series (Wallander, again).   The good news with Wisting?  The two are exactly the same.  100% match.

I don't know if The Night Man has been adapted for TV yet.   I doubt it, given the gruesome nature of the initial crime - the head of a teenaged asylum seeker is displayed on a pole in the Larvik marketplace.   William Wisting and his ubiquitous reporter daughter Line investigate the same crime from different starting points.   Line ends up as a potential victim.   

What I particularly liked, which we don't get in the TV version, is the compelling depiction of provincial policing.   I also liked that in this novel from 2009, Nils Hammer, Wisting's colleague, doesn't overtake the narrative (which he regularly does on TV, due to a charismatic actor).   In fact, I had to concentrate to determine which one he was.

The story faces up to contemporary issues - refugees, prejudice, human trafficking and opiates funding international terrorism.   Author Horst has clearly thought them through.   Everything about the book convinces and compels.   I enjoyed it a lot. 

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.

Clinch - Martin Holmen

This is real winner, which I happened upon by signing up to the Pushkin Press newsletter.
Holmen brings something radically new to Nordic Noir - a period piece set in the early days of classic American Noir. Genius!

Harry Kvist is a down-at-heel former boxer in Stockholm 1932. His main source of income is repossessing bicycles from renters out of funds. The Great Depression in Stockholm is excruciatingly hard. The streets are full of tramps and madmen. Envious eyes are cast at the rise of Hitler's Nazis, who seem to herald a resurgence of the common man.

One December night Harry accepts an out-of-town commission to go and collect a debt from one Zetterburg. Harry strong-arms the guy and arranges to return the next day for the money. But Zetterburg is found dead in his flat and Harry, who is not entirely unknown to the city constabulary, is brought in for questioning. He was seen by a nosy neighbour leaving Zetterburg's building.

Fortunately, he has a potential alibi - a prostitute he passed the time with while waiting for Zetterburg to come home. He was also seen elsewhere in the city at key times, cruising the gay bars. Because Harry's not-so-secret secret is that he prefers rough sex with young men. Very rough.

Anyway, Harry is released and sets out to track down Sonja the bowlegged prostitute. Along the way he comes across a one-eyed Austrian who seems intent on killing him. Then he happens upon a former movie siren who also likes it a little rough.

The book is first-person, present tense, the only way to take your Noir. Holmen has a style all his own, which works brilliantly. He conjures up Stockholm with a glamorous veneer that is only paper-thin. His cast of supporting characters is set with jewels like Harry's landlord Lundin and the prissy proto-Nazi detective Olsson. And the femme fatale, the blowsy drug-addled Doris, is heartbreakingly fatal,

Clinch is the first in a trilogy of Kvist novels, apparently. Next up is Down for the Count. You can count me in!

Midnight Sun - Jo Nesbo

This is, I believe, Nesbo's latest novel. It came out last year. Headhunters was the first Nesbo stand-alone novel. This is the fourth. I raved about Headhunters here on my Biblioblog but got a little bored with the more recent Harry Hole novels. The reprints of the early Hole novels, long delayed in the UK, were delayed for a good reason - they were rubbish. I was beginning to lose faith. Then came the TV series Occupied, with a storyline by Nesbo, and I was tempted to try again. So, having missed The Son and Blood on Snow, I picked up Midnight Sun.

OK, it is not as good as Headhunters. The characters are more traditional, the twist is not as jaw-dropping, the cringe scene is nowhere near as hideous, but at least at barely 200 pages it doesn't outlive its story. The story is, as I say, fairly basic: hero runs away from big city to wilderness with a dark secret - he has done a very bad thing, which turns out not to be so bad after all and is kind of justified. He pitches up in the wilds with an assumed name and falls for the preacher's daughter.

The big difference, of course, is that this is Norway. The wilderness is extremely wild. The locals are not rednecks but Sami (Laplanders) and this is Nesbo telling the tale. He does so expertly. It's secondary Nesbo (which is not the same as second-rate Nesbo) but it's a cracking read and therefore a welcome return to form.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A blast from the past. My review of Headhunters from March 2012:

How annoying for those of us who write - the best contemporary Nordic author of series crime fiction, quite possibly the best full-stop, turns out to be just as good at stand-alone first-person psychological thrillers.  No wonder this has been snapped up for the first Nesbo movie, which opens in the UK and Ireland on April 6.

Thank goodness it's a Norwegian movie, not some hopeless Hollywood mess.  Unfortunately, I suspect that means it won't get shown much outside major cities.

However, back to the book...

I have simply never read such a masterful riff on the twists and turns essential for the genre, nor the untrustworthy narrator device which, when done right, raises the typical to the exceptional.  For example, most thriller writers return to their prologue at the end.  Not Nesbo; he picks it up in the middle and makes it his key turning-point.  As for the final twist ... it was so unexpected, so stunning, that I had to flip back to the relevant passage to make sure Nesbo hadn't cheated.  And he hadn't.  Wonderful - more than worthy of Hitchcock or Patrick Hamilton.

But the world of books would be a dreary old place if we all agreed...

I found a slightly different opinion on Beattie's Book Blog (unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community), which is an excellent, highly-informed site:

I have to say I didn't rate the stand-alone Headhunters, (although I reckon it will make a great movie); no give me the Harry Hole titles any day and on that note the good news is that the next one is due soon.Phantom – the thrilling follow-up to The Leopard……….Synopsis:Summer. A boy is lying on the floor of an Oslo apartment. He is bleeding and will soon die. In order to place his life and death in some kind of context he begins to tell his story. Outside, the church bells toll.Autumn. Former police inspector Harry Hole returns to Oslo after three years abroad. He seeks out his old boss at Police Headquarters to request permission to investigate a homicide. But the case is already closed: the young junkie was in all likelihood shot dead by a fellow addict. Yet, Harry is granted permission to visit the boy's alleged killer in jail. There, he meets himself and his own history. What follows is the solitary investigation of what appears to be the first impossible case in Harry Hole's career. And while Harry is searching, the murdered boy continues his story.A man walks the dark streets of Oslo. The streets are his and he has always been there. He is a phantom.Yay, bring it on, can't wait to read it................

Me neither.  Actually, I don't have to.  It is published in the UK today and Harvill Secker have done a vid.

What I want to know, though, is what has happened to the first two Hole books, The Bats (1997) and The Cockroaches (1998), neither of which are available here?  I can't think of another series, which has established a reputation and sales in another country, that hasn't started from the beginning here.  Decidedly odd.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Really, really wish I hadn't asked that last question. Do you suppose it provoked them?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are all the Nesbo books I've reviewed on this site.