What a pleasure to find a new author, a new detective, and a new series from Norway. Perfect combination for me.
In Mexico, I found a dusty copy of Yours Until Death in a coffee shop. I had my doubts when I read on thecover it was 'an unbearably tense novel of revenge and murder' concerning psychopathic teenagers and their 'torture chamber'.
The novel is not close to that, I was happy to find out - it's witty, clever and completely winning.
Gunner Staalesen has created a great Norwegian private detective in the lone wolf style of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. His name is Varg Vuem - that's right, his first name means Wolf, which is old Norse for outsider - and he's a tough-talking wisecracker who is as smooth as he is clever. He has an office in Bergen, is slightly alcoholic, and is an ex-social worker with many of his cases dealing with social issues.
He is asked by the son of a woman named Wenche Andresen to retrieve a bike some teenagers have taken. They have been terrorizing the neighbourhood and no one wants to stand up to them. Varg finds them in their ramshackle hut in the woods behind some apartment towers. They are wild teens, but more bored by neglectful parents than actually psychopathic. A few nights later he is talking to the leader, nicknamed Joker, in the parking lot when he sees Wenche on an upper balcony screaming - her husband has been stabbed in the doorway of her apartment. She claims she found him there as he was dying. The police are quick to blame the teen gang, but Varg knows that isn't the case. As he gets involved with seeking the truth, he begins a relationship with Wenche and helps her as she becomes a suspect as well.
Could it have been the leader of the apartment youth club, who also desires Wenche? Or Richard, a colleague of hers who used to desire her? There are a few good suspects on Wenche's side, and several ladies on Varg's side to keep him occupied while he works the case.
I highly recommend Varg Veum, and I'm looking for the rest of the series. His style is the hard drinking, takes a beating, smart talker - a bit on the cynical side, but always with a dry quip ready. Staalesen has written twenty-one books in the series, of which thirteen have been translated into English so far. Varg Veum is such a popular character that twelve of the novels have been made into hit films in Norway, including Yours Until Death in 2008. He has twice won the Golden Pistol, Norway's top crime writing prize.
Although he has made a conscious effort to not describe Varg's appearance, a life-sized statue of the detective has been placed outside his fictional office on Strandkaien. The author approves and is complimented, noting not many fictional detectives have been memorialized, aside form Sherlock Holmes.
The EuroCrime edition from Arcadia Books shows a lake and a dock which have nothing to do with the story. The other English edition shown here has a figure in a menacing hooded robe, which again has nothing to do with the story, but there you go, you have a choice.
If you like classic private detectives, do yourself a favour and try a Varg Veum mystery. I really enjoyed Yours Until Death and am so glad to discover a new talented writer.
1979 / Paperback / 331 pages
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