In the idyllic, quiet and mellow small town of Stavern, close to Larvik, on the South-Eastern coast of Norway, a cut-off left foot in a training shoe is found on a beach. This macabre finding turns out to be the first in a series. Soon, another left foot is found. And then some more. In one week, four left feet have floated onto different parts of the shoreline. What on earth is happening? Are the owners of the feet dead? Is there a mass murderer on the loose in Stavern?

Inspector William Wisting is an experienced police officer, who has investigated many murder cases. But he has never ever seen the likes of the case he encounters in Dregs. Four feet – left feet – and therefore obviously from four different people.

Soon he and his excellent team of investigators are able to link the feet to people that have been missing. It’s a heterogeneous group – three elderly, retired men and a woman with a mental illness. Wisting goes back to the investigations of the missing person cases, and finds that the cases have been very poorly investigated. The three men, it turns out, knew one another. Their ties go back a long time, to the Second World War. But why would somebody hunt them down now – more than half a century later? And what about the murdered woman – how does she fit in?

The pace in Dregs accelerates as the plot develops and climaxes in a wonderfully realistic and violent denouement.

Jorn Lier Horst is an interesting and very good Norwegian crime fiction writer. Dregs is the sixth book in Jorn Lier Horst’s series about Inspector William Wisting, and the eight novel published by the author. Lier Horst is actually a police officer, working in the city of Larvik, not far from where the action in Dregs takes place, so he knows police work as well as the area he writes about, and it shows. His books, including this one, feel very authentic and have excellent descriptions of police work.

I have read several of Jorn Lier Horst’s books, and I am delighted that he has finally been translated into English. I would have liked it better, of course, if the publishing had started with the first book in the series. That said, Dregs is a well written crime fiction novel, with a very interesting mystery and an excellent and twisting plot. It’s a very good police procedural, and William Wisting is an interesting character that I look very much forward to meeting again.

Praise for Jorn Lier Horst:

‘At his best, the author is both a sociologist and a philosopher.’ –Terje Stemland, Aftenposten

Links to books by Jorn Lier Horst at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

Meet a new Norwegian crime fiction writer: Thomas Enger. I first introduced him in a post on Nordic Bookblog about one year ago. A writer whose name you will probably learn well in the years ahead if you’re into Scandinavian crime fiction. Burned (Skinndød) is his debut novel, but the Norwegian publisher Gyldendal thought it was outstanding and signed a contract with him for a whole series of books. Gyldendal never does that with debutantes. They describe Burned as probably “the best crime novel manuscript we’ve ever received from a new writer”.

Burned is the first book in a planned series featuring the crime journalist Henning Juul. After Gyldendal bought it, it has been sold to 15 countries, including England, Denmark, Italy and the USA. The next book in the series, Phantom pain (Fantomsmerte) is due in Norway on August 20th this year.

Henning Juul, Thomas Enger’s main protagonist, is a somewhat tortured Norwegian internet newspaper reporter. He recently lost his son Jonas in a fire which also burned down his flat and severely injured Henning. He is scarred both inside and out, and ridden by guilt.

Not only has he lost his son – most of his world is in ruins: His wife has left him and now lives with another reporter. His mother is a drunk. He is not on speaking terms with his sister Trine. Also, he is compulsive: He needs to constantly check his fire alarms and change their batteries. Life is tough for Juul. He needs a change in his life. He needs to get back to working. Turn his attention away from the ruins and scars that are his life, and ride his Vespa back into real life.

So Henning returns to work, where he is no longer the grand master of reporting – the news hound everybody looks up to and admires – rather, he is a potentially troublesome colleague with a new and inexperienced boss. The first case he is assigned is one that seems to be the first of its kind in Norway: In a solitary tent somebody finds the body of a half-buried woman who has been stoned to death. There are marks from lashing across her back and one of her hands has been severed. It appears to be a Sharia law-type of killing. Yet, this is Norway. Things like this do not happen in Norway.

The deceased turns out to be a young female student, an ethnic Norwegian, named Henriette Hagerup. Her boyfriend is a Muslim. And Henriette was known to be flirtatious. It seems to the police to be a slam-dunk case. They don’t mind that. There are other things to do.

To Henning there is something about this case, a hard to pin-down gut kind of a feeling he has, that makes him feel there is more to this story. He begins to dig into the dead girl’s background, her boyfriend, Marhoni, her friends and her life. As it is hard for him to put his finger on it and verbalize his feelings, it is difficult for him to defend spending time on this story , but even so he can’t let go. He is vulnerable at this point in his life, and the stakes are correspondingly high. He can ill-afford to be wrong. When another life is lost, the stakes get even higher.

Burned is fascinating. It’s hard for me to pin-point exactly why it grabbed me the way it did. Perhaps it was because of the complex character of Henning Juul. His eccentricities and strangeness, his vulnerable position and the sense one gets that he is somehow fragile, and, in contrast, his vast experience and obvious skills as a reporter. Or perhaps it was the plot Thomas Enger has created – which is a winner. Or the storytelling and style, which is rich, convoluted and multi dimensional. It could have been any of these – one thing would have been enough to glue me to the book. It could have been all these things – they are all there. Either way, I feel quite certain you too will enjoy Burned by Thomes Enger. Greatly! Oh – and did I mention that the ending is superb?

Links to books by Thomas Enger at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

Norwegian newspapers Dagbladet and VG today report that Jo Nesbo will publish the next and ninth novel in the Harry Hole series in Norwegian in August this year. Nesbo’s series about the reckless alcoholic Harry Hole is the most successful Norwegian crime fiction series ever and all of Nesbo’s books have topped the Norwegian bestseller lists, so this is good news for his Norwegian fans. Jo Nesbo himself is in “isolation” while he is finishing the book, according to the Norwegian newspapers.

Meanwhile,  Jo Nesbo’s The Leopard, the eight book in the series (and the sixth to be translated into English) is about to be released in the UK (see The Leopard at Amazon UK). The release date is January 20th, and The Snowman (the fifth in the Harry Hole series) is to be released in the US on May 10 (it has actually been available for a while via companies that have imported the UK edition). In addition, the production of the movie based on his freestanding novel, Hodejegerne (The Headhunters), is well under way as well.

So this is an exciting time for Harry Hole fans and must be quite exciting for Jo Nesbo as well!

Harry Hole has a knack for solving difficult cases. He sees invisible patterns, has a strong intuition that guides him, and lots of guts, will, and determination. He has solved a series of difficult cases, the last one involving the so-called Snowman. But it has cost him dearly; in fact, almost everything: The relationship with Rakel and Oleg is over, he has few friends left, and he is probably the most disliked detective in the police department.

Harry Hole was never an easy man to work with. His attitudes – anti-authority, anti-sobriety, anti-rules-of-the-game – make him a danger to himself and those around him. He disregards even direct orders if he sees fit, he doesn’t make compromises, he can be and often is quite intimidating, and he has an unfortunate tendency to be smarter than his bosses. Also, he never sucks up to anyone, and he is far less polite to those above him in rank than to those below him. Harry Hole is the kind of man bosses mostly look for opportunities to get rid of.

Now Harry has turned his back on it all – Oslo, the police department, ignorant bosses and politics – and has gone to Hong Kong. Deep down, Harry is a substance abuser, so what better place to go? He likes to get drunk or anesthetized by some or other drug, and now he has buried himself deep in the squalor of Hong Kong’s opium dens.

This is where we meet him in Jo Nesbo’s (Nesbø) new crime fiction novel The Leopard (original title “Panserhjerte”). (Read more about Jo Nesbo.)

However, in the cold winter in Oslo, a murderer is loose on the streets. He has killed two young women in a very brutal manner – both victims were found with twenty-four inexplicable puncture wounds, and both drowned in their own blood. The crime scenes are clean, the police have no clues, there seems to be no connection between the victims, and on top of that, the media are screaming and raising hell. So the bosses in the Oslo police decide to lure home to Norway the detective who doesn’t want to be found, the only Norwegian detective who knows how to hunt mass murderers.

They send a female police officer to Hong Kong to find Harry Hole and bring him home – using whatever means necessary. Harry agrees to return, not knowing the trouble and ploys that await him in the new mystery that faces him in The Leopard.

There is the case to deal with – an extremely difficult case, but in addition, Harry Hole soon realizes that he is also being used as a pawn in a huge conflict over power and jurisdiction in the Norwegian police system. Moreover, like the pawns in the game of chess, he may be sacrificed at any time. Yet, even though Harry Hole may be a pawn in a bigger game, it is not a game he cares about, and repeatedly he shows the powers that be that unlike chess pieces, Harry Hole has a mind of his own and makes his own moves according to his very own rules.

As always, Harry focuses on the case. He has never been too concerned about self-preservation, does not concern himself with his career and similar things seemingly so important to so many. And soon he makes his first important discovery: The victims actually did have something in common – they had both spent the night in an isolated mountain hostel. And now someone is picking off the guests who spent that particular night there one by one. But who were the people there that night? What happened there? Will Harry manage to stop the murderer before the truth of what transpired will forever be buried in blood?

The Leopard, the sixth Harry Hole thriller (in English – but actually the eight in the Harry Hole series) by the internationally acclaimed Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo is outstanding. The plot twists and curls, and Harry Hole, an extraordinarily interesting man, becomes more and more fascinating. It is a joy to follow him as he out-foxes bosses and colleagues, alienates people left and right in the police force, and doles out justice Hole-style. The Leopard is a top notch, painfully suspenseful crime fiction, and quite possibly Jo Nesbo’s best. It’s a thick brick of a book, but far too short. I loved it. I am certain The Leopard is one of the best crime fiction books of 2011!

PS: Jo Nesbo’s English publisher unfortunately is trying to sell The Leopard and Jo Nesbo as the “next Stieg Larsson”. To my mind Nesbo may well be as good as Larsson, but his style, plots and characters are very different. To me Jo Nesbo currently is Jo Nesbo and he will continue to be Jo Nesbo. He has created a name for himself in his own right, and will continue to grow that name. No other name should be necessary.

Links to books by Jo Nesbo at amazon US, amazon UK, amazon CAN, and Barnes & Noble: Nesbo

The Last Fix (original title En liten gyllen ring), by Norwegian author Kjell Ola Dahl, is another installment in his series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Gunnarstranda and his assistant Frank Frølich. It is actually the second crime novel in this series – the English tranlations are out of sequence. It has won the Riverton Prize (Riverton-prisen) 2000 for Best Norwegian Crime Novel of the Year, was nominated for the Brage Literary Prize (Brage-prisen) 2000 for Best Norwegian Literary Novel of the Year, The Glass Key (Glasnyckeln) 2000 for Best Nordic Crime Novel of the Year and the Martin Beck Award 2001 for Best Foreign Crime Novel of the Year.

This suspenseful thriller starts with the killing of a young woman, found brutally murdered. The evening before, Katrine Bratterud was at a party in a collective for drug abusers, where she was just finishing her treatment. However, at this point she was clean and had a good job. She disappeared from the party in a car. The last thing she sees is a naked man approaching from out of the woods. Why did she disappear? And why did she have to die?

Gunnarstranda and Frølich have a tough case to solve. Maybe even a case that cannot be solved, as there are few leads. The investigation is hard and time consuming, and with few to go on they soon start to focus on possible motives. Is Katrine’s past as an addict the key to the crime?

The Last Fix is a good, well plotted, suspenseful police procedural, and has lots of interesting details of a modern police procedure. It is, to my taste maybe a little too full of moralistic clichés about modern society, and also to some extent a little vulgar in its use of language. However, this is the style of K.O. Dahl and not due to the translator, Don Bartlett, who seems to me to have done an excellent job. On the other hand, the novel also has some interesting psychological insights, entertaining understatements and dry humor. The end is great.

(This book is currently not available in the US.)

Links to K. O. Dahl’s books at amazon UK, amazon US, and amazon CAN.