Do You like book The Writing On The Wall (2004)?
Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum is a true original. His name can mean "lone wolf", "persona non grata" and other negative labels, and Varg manages to live up to all of them. His background as a sociologist working in child services (before he went postal on a child abuser) tends to attract him to cases involving children, and this is no exception. Varg is hired by a mother whose teenage girl Torild has disappeared. As Varg digs deeper, he finds that Torild was embroiled with some very unsavoury characters and finds himself the recipient of some letters threatening him with death. Needless to say, Varg ploughs on and irritates the police, witnesses, parents, suspects and everybody else that he encounters.The Varg Veum novels are set in Staalesen's home town of Bergen and he excels at describing the city, the surrounding countryside and the bitter weather encountered there. Similar to Rebus' Edinburgh, the reader really feels a sense of place when reading these books.Apparently these books are highly popular in Norway, and one of the greatest Varg Veum mysteries is why so few of them have been translated into English, and why the publishers chose to not start with the first, and to translate intermittent novels in the series rather than give English readers continuity. I highly recommend these, and wish there was more of them.
—Greg
