Blog tour: Pursued by Death by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett
This post is part of a blog tour organised by Random Things Blog Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.
‘When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline “YOUNG MAN MISSING”, he realises he’s seen the youth just a few days earlier – at a crossroads in the countryside, with his two friends. It turns out that the three were on their way to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen.
‘Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he’s pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.
‘Is the body he’s found connected to the death of a journalist who was digging into the fish farm’s operations two years earlier? And does either incident have something to do with the competition between the two powerful families that dominate Solvik’s salmon-farming industry?
‘Or are the deaths the actions of the “Village Beast” – the brutal small-town justice meted out by rural communities in this part of the world?’
In Pursued by Death, by Gunnar Staalesen, seasoned PI Varg Veum can’t help but get involved when Jonas Kleiva, a young man he happened to see while on an unanticipated bus journey a couple of days previously, is reported missing.
Subsequently, Varg travels to the small fishing village of Solvik, where he not only happens to discover the body of one of Jonas’ friends, but also gets talking to some of the locals.
These include Jonas’ mother Betty who, while the police concentrate on finding her son, engages Varg to look into the death of her partner, Korg, in an apparent accident two years previously.
Varg discovers deep-rooted antagonisms between local families, as well as complex and sometimes surprising relationships between individuals linked to Korg’s death and Jonas’ disappearance. But are they the key to what happened?
Like the other book in this series that I’ve read, Mirror Image, Pursued by Death felt sharp, fresh, and timely to me, even though it’s set in the early 2000s and was originally published in Norwegian at around the same time.
I expect, as previously, this is partly due to its recent translation by the ever-reliable Don Bartlett, but also because its key themes – businesses and their funders prioritising profit over sustainability; catastrophic, visible exhaustion of the planet’s resources; and the nature and effectiveness (or lack thereof) of environmental protest – are even more relevant today than they were 20 years ago.
Also, as with Mirror Image, Pursued by Death’s time setting means it’s more of a challenge for Varg to investigate the case because he can’t rely on the internet for much, and therefore all the more satisfying to see him work things out through legwork.
The geographical setting of a backwater whose local fjord has been absolutely ruined by the salmon industry was an intriguing alternative to the common depiction of Norway as a country of cosmopolitan cities and picturesque landscapes.
As is the case with small places everywhere, everyone seems to know and have complex histories with one another, and I was continually surprised by new connections coming to light and making it even harder to solve the mysteries.
The information about how the fishing industry operated piqued my interest and put me in mind of Orenda stablemate Roxanne Bouchard’s novels, albeit on a much faster speed – I love both fast-paced and slow-burn crime novels, and Pursued by Death happened to come along when I was very much in the mood for the former.
Some other things I appreciated about this book were its dramatic and thrilling climax; the wry humour deployed throughout; and the interactions between Varg and freelance investigative journalist Torunn Tafjord, who makes a very welcome reappearance.
Pursued by Death is a fast-paced, compelling, and wryly humorous crime novel.
