Bergen PI 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 the two cases are linked. There are also unsettling, and increasingly uncanny, similarities to events that took place thirty-six 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 a terrifying cost.
The first chapter, for the reading, is the meeting between Varg Veum and the lawyer who wants to hire him to find her sister and husband.
“Staalesen is one of my very favourite Scandinavian authors and this is a series with very sharp teeth” Ian Rankin
“The Norwegian Chandler” Jo Nesbø
“A vibrant look at the life, loves and betrayals of the past and the ways in which their tentacles cling, never letting you go” John Harvey
“Every inch the equal of his Nordic confreres Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbø” Independent
“Employs Chandleresque similes with a Nordic Noir twist” Wall Street Journal
“Staalesen continually reminds us he is one of the finest of Nordic novelists” Financial Times
Translator bio
Don Bartlett completed a Diploma in Translation in 1994 and then finished an MA in literary translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000. He started off translating from German and Danish, but then translated the Norwegian author Pernille Rygg in 2003. Since then he has worked on novels by Kjell Ola Dahl and Gunnar Staalesen (both Orenda Books now), Jo Nesbø, Karl Ove Knausgård, Per Petterson, Lars Saabye Christensen and Roy Jacobsen.
Author bio:
Gunnar Staalesen published his first novel in 1969. He has written a great many novels and is also a screenwriter and playwright, but he is perhaps best known for his crime novels and especially the Varg Veum series, which started in 1977. There are now nineteen books in the series and a new one is due out very soon. He has won the Riverton Prize, the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize and Gyldendal's Endowment. He has sold more than five million books in 26 countries.
The translator has obtained permission from Orenda Books to use this sample and to record it for Translators Aloud.
Translators Aloud is a YouTube channel devoted to sharing the work of literary translators, for both published and unpublished works.