Mirror Image (Varg Veum) by Gunnar Staalesen

Mirror Image (Varg Veum) by Gunnar Staalesen.

Translated by Don Bartlett.

Published 31st August 2023 by Orenda Books.

From the cover of the book:

Bergen Private Investigator 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 that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling – and increasingly uncanny – similarities to events that took place thirty-six years earlier, when a woman and her saxophonist lover drove their car off a cliff, 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 terrifying cost...

A chilling, dark and twisting story of love and revenge, Mirror Image is Staalesen at his most thrilling, thought-provoking best.

***********

Bergen PI, Varg Veum, is offered an intriguing case when a lawyer asks him to track down her missing sister and brother-in-law, who seem to have disappeared without a trace. In a stroke of good fortune for Veum's empty bank account, he also finds himself involved in the case of a ship on its way to Norway with a suspect cargo.

At first these cases seem to have no apparent connection, but curious links between the two begin to emerge. The husband of the missing sister worked for the same company operating the cargo vessel, and there are odd echoes between the sudden disappearance of him and his wife and a case of a double suicide in the family over thirty years before.

As events unfurl, Veum is pulled into a complex web of secrets, lies and desire, and the shadowy world of subterfuge around nuclear waste and illegal immigrants... putting him squarely in the way of a past adversary's spiteful revenge.

My favourite Norwegian PI, Varg Veum, is back in a brand new twisty mystery that takes a considerable amount of good old-fashioned, gum-shoe leg work to get to the bottom of. At the heart of the tale is an anxious relative, concerned about the fate of her sister, but as Veum trudges around Bergen and its environs the story burgeons into one which connects past and present events through the timeless trouble-makers of affairs of the heart and greed. 

The threads of this story are far reaching in time and place, flipping between the present and intimately described scenes of the past that ooze with atmosphere and tension. It is hard to see how all these threads can possibly resolve into a coherent picture, but in his capable way Staalesen does an excellent job of keeping track of them all as they draw together towards the slickest of endings - one that makes the absolute most of the consequences of what the darker emotions of passion, jealousy, avarice, and revenge can lead to. This kept me guessing right to the delicious denouement, when Veum puts the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that suddenly has you looking at the whole chain of carefully contrived events in an entirely new light. Well played, Gunnar Staalesen, well played!

The translator, Don Bartlett, does an excellent job with Staalesen's text once more, retaining every ounce of the fabulous Humphrey-Bogart-does-Philip-Marlowe vibes that I know and love in Varg Veum, right down to the sardonic humour and sassy comebacks - with some clever little nods to the great man himself. I think this story shows a more reflective side of Veum too, especially when it comes to his views on romance, and his love of jazz thrums throughout.

Staalesen is one of the Nordic noir giants, and this book has the mark of another hit on the Norwegian crime front. I loved it from start to finish, and cannot wait for the next one.

Mirror Image is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats. You can support the best of indie publishing by buying direct from Orenda Books HERE.

About the author:

One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. 

He is the author of over twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour) and Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted in 2019. 

He lives with his wife in Bergen.

About the translator:

Don Bartlett completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbø and Gunnar Staalesen’s Varg Veum series: We Shall Inherit the Wind, Wolves in the Dark and the Petrona award-winning Where Roses Never Die. 

He also translated Faithless, the previous book in Kjell Ola Dahl’s Oslo Detective series for Orenda Books. 

He lives with his family in a village in Norfolk.