by Gunnar Staalesen (T. Don Bartlett)
SYNOPSIS
When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline 'YOUNG MAN MISSING', he realises he's seen the youth just a few days earlier – at a crossroads in the countryside, with his two friends. It turns out that the three were on their way to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen.
Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he's pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.
Is the body he's found connected to the death of a journalist who was digging into the fish farm's operations two years earlier? And does either incident have something to do with the competition between the two powerful families that dominate Solvik's salmon-farming industry?
Or are the deaths the actions of the 'Village Beast' – the brutal small-town justice meted out by rural communities in this part of the world.
Shocking, timely and full of breathtaking twists and turns, Pursued by Death reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world's greatest crime writers.
REVIEW
I am a long time fan of the Varg Veum series and I personally think that Gunnar Staalesen is one of the most underrated Scandinavian Crime Fiction authors. Every time I read another novel from this series I am totally transported into this world, following along with the investigations and, in this particular case, an investigation which Varg stumbles upon by completely by accident. After his work as a PI considerably irritates a man over a boundary dispute, he finds himself in trouble with the local police, car confiscated and with a revoked license out of pure spite! With no other means of getting home to Bergen, Varg ends up on a bus journey with various other people, one of whom he sees in the news soon afterwards having been reported missing.
Intrigued by the case, Varg decides to get involved but the investigation does take a bit of a turn and ends up looking into environmental topics surrounding large-scale fish farms in Norway, and then develops into a more complex situation involving lots of different people. This idea and the themes are very unique and are totally different to the more typical Nordic Noir cases, but I found it really interesting and it is obviously a timely topic to highlight and bring to people's attention. I really love reading these stories, and one of the things that stands out to me is that they probably have the strongest links with the culture, traditions, people and landscapes of Norway - but at the same time they are the easiest to read. The writing flows beautifully, the characters and their personalities are incredibly vivid and this is all on top of a captivating mystery. Any fans of Varg Veum will love this latest installment but I would encourage any Nordic Noir fans who haven't read from this series before to add Pursued By Death to their TBRs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR
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) and Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted in 2019. He lives with his wife in Bergen.
Don Bartlett completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbø and Gunnar Staalesen’s Varg Veum series: We Shall Inherit the Wind, Wolves in the Dark and the Petrona award-winning Where Roses Never Die. He also translated Faithless, the previous book in Kjell Ola Dahl’s Oslo Detective series for Orenda Books. He lives with his family in a village in Norfolk.
Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, Gunnar Staalesen and Orenda Books - @OrendaBooks for the opportunity to read and review.
Fiction: Crime Fiction / Translated Crime Fiction / Nordic Noir
Publisher: Orenda Books
ISBN: 978-1916788244
Pages: 300pp
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