22/05/2011
How Do They Say "Asking for Information" in Norwegian?
It's yard sale season here now which means I buy lots of books - even though my reader's block is still painfully in force; go figure. Among my latest purchases is a book by a Norwegian writer previously unknown to me, Gunnar Staalesen. Has anyone read him? I ask this question as I know several readers of this blog hail from Scandinavia and may be familiar with his work.
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Yes, I've read three Gunnar Staalesen books. I like them - they are classic PI novels (Philip Marlowe-like) but the protagonist is an ex-social worker, so the plots tend to concern the failed in society (children, teenagers). The books were first written in the 1970s and a couple translated. Then nothing happened for ages, until Arcadia has picked up a couple of the later ones. There are moer than 20 of them altogether, and the author is very popular - there is a TV series in Norway based on the books which you can get with English (and maybe French!) subtitles but it is a US region DVD. (I got mine on Amazon v cheap).
I've reviewed these at Euro Crime so do check out my reviews if you are interested. I would say these books are well up there with the best of the PI novels being written today.
The author visited the UK recently and though I could not attend there is a video of his talk (I think linked to on Friend Feed so you could find it via search) - in which he says he might continue the novels with Varg's son as the main character (as Varg is getting a bit old now, having started in 1970s!)
Staalesen writes a nice, solid series with a likeable lonely wolf protagonist. He is not quite in the league of Jo Nesbø and Håkan Nesser, but then, not many Scandinavian writers are.
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