Petrona Shortlist Announced

 

Exceptional crime fiction from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden shortlisted for the 2022 Petrona Award.

Six exceptional crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have been shortlisted for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The shortlist is announced today, Wednesday 16 November and is as follows:

FATAL ISLES by Maria Adolfsson tr. Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)

THE THERAPIST by Helene Flood tr. Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)

EVERYTHING IS MINE by Ruth Lillegraven tr. Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)

KNOCK KNOCK by Anders Roslund tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)

COLD AS HELL by Lilja Sigurðardóttir tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

THE RABBIT FACTOR by Antti Tuomainen tr. David Hackston (Finland, Orenda Books)

The winning title will be announced on Thursday 8 December 2022. The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize.

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

The Petrona team would like to thank our sponsor, David Hicks, for his continued generous support of the Petrona Award.

The judges’ comments on the shortlist:

There were 31 entries for the 2022 Petrona Award from five countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden). The novels were translated by 23 translators and submitted by 14 publishers/imprints. There were 16 female, 14 male and one male/male pair of authors.

This year’s Petrona Award shortlist sees Norway represented with two novels; Sweden with two and Finland and Iceland with one each. The judges selected the shortlist from a particularly strong pool of candidates with the shortlisted titles ranging from police procedural and domestic noir to the darkly comic.

As ever, we are extremely grateful to the six translators whose expertise and skill have allowed readers to access these outstanding examples of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to the publishers who continue to champion and support translated fiction. The significantly increasing number of female writers being translated is also to be commended.

The judges’ comments on each of the shortlisted titles:

 Maria Adolfsson - FATAL ISLES tr. Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)

Maria Adolfsson’s gripping debut, FATAL ISLES, set in Doggerland - a group of islands in the North Sea between Denmark and the United Kingdom – paints a vivid picture of a northern island community with traditions, rich and poor families, and a stormy climate. Doggerland comes alive on the pages so much that you would never guess it is totally fictional. DI Karen Eiken Hornby is tasked with investigating the murder of her boss’s ex-wife. Does the motive have any connection to a secretive commune that existed on the island in the past? FATAL ISLES is a high tension, character driven, atmospheric police procedural.

 Helene Flood - THE THERAPIST tr. Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)

A man goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Police detective Gundersen is officially working the case whilst therapist Sara tries to understand where her husband is. Set in the leafy Oslo outskirts, THE THERAPIST is a tense read that keeps us intrigued with unsettling twists and turns. Sara is constantly analysing herself and the people around her as her whole life is turned upside down. At the same time, she fears for her own safety and tries to remain professional with her clients. Author Helene Flood is a trained psychologist who has used her experience to inform the characters and the narrative in this page-turning debut thriller.

 Ruth Lillegraven - EVERYTHING IS MINE tr. Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)

EVERYTHING IS MINE is the story of two happily married professionals, Clara an ambitious child rights activist at the Ministry of Justice, and Henrik, a compassionate paediatrician. Dedication to their twin sons and their respective causes begins to crack when they are faced with cases of murder and abuse and an unravelling of a tangled web of emotional secrets follows. A powerful narration and detailed observations show a stark contrast between social standing and geographical differences in Norwegian life, and leave the readers with questions of how, and if, individuals can deal with unfairness and pain. EVERYTHING IS MINE combines important issues, thrilling action and a smart intricate plot, with a strong focus on social injustice and complex family relations.

 Anders Roslund - KNOCK KNOCK tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)

Anders Roslund has published nine novels to date as part of the successful writing duos of Roslund & Hellström and Roslund & Thunberg, as Anton Svensson, and has been the recipient of numerous, prestigious international awards. Since the death of Börge Hellström, Roslund has continued their Ewert Grens series and KNOCK KNOCK is his first solo venture. Set over the course of three days, KNOCK KNOCK is another fine example of Roslund's talent for seamlessly blending together a solid police procedural with a high-octane thriller, leading to a gritty and fast-paced read set against his astute observations on the societal and political issues of contemporary Sweden.

Lilja Sigurðardóttir - COLD AS HELL tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

COLD AS HELL, the first novel in a new slick series, introduces Áróra who returns from UK to her homeland Iceland following the disappearance of her estranged sister Ísafold. She uncovers a corrupted world of dark secrets but needs help from her policeman uncle to navigate an Icelandic society with which she is now unfamiliar. The author creates a chilling and tense atmosphere where the midnight sun hides crimes, and all relations are tested. The richness and intensity of the writing makes the investigative accountant Áróra, who will stop at nothing to understand and trace her sibling, a thoroughly modern and captivating protagonist in a league of her own.  

 Antti Tuomainen - THE RABBIT FACTOR tr. David Hackston (Finland, Orenda Books)

Antti Tuomainen was shortlisted for the Petrona Award twice before winning it in 2020 with, LITTLE SIBERIA. THE RABBIT FACTOR, which was also shortlisted for this year’s CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation, superbly demonstrates Tuomainen's singular gift for dark, absurd crime fiction undercut with poignancy. THE RABBIT FACTOR puts at its heart an ordinary man drawing on his previously undiscovered and extraordinary resolve, to carve out and keep his place in a hostile world, with often darkly funny results.

 The judges

Jackie Farrant - creator of RAVEN CRIME READS and a bookseller/Area Commercial Support for a major book chain in the UK

Miriam Owen - founder of the NORDIC NOIR blog and creator of content for communities

Ewa Sherman - translator and writer, and blogger at NORDIC LIGHTHOUSE.

Award administrator

Karen Meek – owner of the EURO CRIME website and blog.

Further information can be found on the Petrona Award website: http://www.petronaaward.co.uk.

Petrona Award Entries 2020

The Petrona Award are pleased to announce that all the 37 titles that were eligible for the 2020 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year have been entered by the publishers.

The winner of the Award will be announced at CrimeFest in June.

The rules for eligibility are:

The submission must be in translation and published in English in the UK during the preceding calendar year i.e. 1 January – 31 December 2019.

The author of the submission must either be born in Scandinavia* or the submission must be set in Scandinavia*.

The submission must have been published in its original language after 1999. 

(E-books that meet the above criteria may be considered at the judges’ discretion (does not include self-published titles))

*in this instance taken to be Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

More details about the award and the history behind it can be found on the Petrona Award website. The winner of the 2019 Award was The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce and published by Michael Joseph.

The award is sponsored by David Hicks.

Entries (ie published in 2019)

[13 titles are by Female authors, 24 by Male. There are 24 translators (13 Female (23 titles) and 11 Male (14 titles)) and 6 countries are represented.]

Jussi Adler-Olsen - The Washington Decree tr. Steve Schein (M, Denmark) Quercus
Stefan Ahnhem - Motive X tr. Agnes Broomé (M, Sweden) Head of Zeus
Heine Bakkeid - I Will Miss You Tomorrow tr. Anne Bruce (M, Norway) Raven Books
Mattias Berg - The Carrier tr. George Goulding (M, Sweden) MacLehose Press
Samuel Bjork - The Boy in the Headlights tr. Charlotte Barslund (M, Norway) Doubleday
Arne Dahl - Hunted tr. Neil Smith (M, Sweden) Harvill Secker
Kjell Ola Dahl - The Courier tr. Don Bartlett (M, Norway) Orenda Books
M T Edvardsson - A Nearly Normal Family tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles (M, Sweden) Pan Macmillan
Thomas Enger - Inborn tr. Kari Dickson (M, Norway) Orenda Books
Agnete Friis - The Summer of Ellen tr. Sinead Quirke Kongerskov (F, Denmark)Soho Press
Camilla Grebe - After She's Gone tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (F, Sweden) Zaffre
Johana Gustawsson - Blood Song tr. David Warriner (F, France) Orenda Books
Anne Holt - A Grave for Two tr. Anne Bruce (F, Norway) Corvus
Jørn Lier Horst - The Cabin tr. Anne Bruce (M, Norway) Anne Bruce
Stina Jackson - The Silver Road tr. Susan Beard (F, Sweden) Corvus
Ragnar Jonasson - The Island tr. Victoria Cribb (M, Iceland) Penguin
David Lagercrantz - The Girl Who Lived Twice tr. George Goulding (M, Sweden) MacLehose Press
Leena Lehtolainen - Where Have All the Young Girls Gone tr. Owen F Witesman (F, Finland) AmazonCrossing
Mariette Lindstein - The Cult on Fog Island tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles (F, Sweden) HQ
Stefan Malmström - Kult tr. Suzanne Martin Cheadle (M, Sweden) Silvertail Books
Niklas Natt och Dag - The Wolf and the Watchman tr. Ebba Segerberg (M, Sweden) John Murray
Jo Nesbo - Knife tr. Neil Smith (M, Norway) Harvill Secker
Mads Peder Nordbo - The Girl Without Skin tr. Charlotte Barslund (M, Denmark) Text Publishing
Mads Peder Nordbo - Cold Fear tr. Charlotte Barslund (M, Denmark) Text Publishing
Andreas Norman - The Silent War tr. Ian Giles (M, Sweden) riverrun
Kristina Ohlsson - The Flood tr. Marlaine Delargy (F, Sweden) Simon & Schuster
Martin Osterdahl - Ten Swedes Must Die tr. Peter Sean Woltemade (M, Sweden) AmazonCrossing
Roslund & Hellstrom - Three Hours tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (M, Sweden) riverrun
Lilja Sigurdardottir - Cage tr. Quentin Bates (F, Iceland) Orenda Books
Yrsa Sigurdardottir - The Absolution tr. Victoria Cribb (F, Iceland) Hodder & Stoughton
Gunnar Staalesen - Wolves at the Door tr. Don Bartlett (M, Norway) Orenda Books
Viveca Sten - In the Shadow of Power tr. Marlaine Delargy (F, Sweden) AmazonCrossing
Soren Sveistrup - The Chestnut Man tr. Caroline Waight (M, Denmark) Michael Joseph
Antti Tuomainen - Little Siberia tr. David Hackston (M, Finland) Orenda Books
Helene Tursten - Hunting Game tr. Paul Norlen (F, Sweden) Soho Press
Helene Tursten - Winter Grave tr. Marlaine Delargy (F, Sweden) Soho Press
Joakim Zander - The Friend tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (M, Sweden) Head of Zeus

The Petrona Award 2019

Outstanding crime fiction from Denmark, Iceland and Norway shortlisted for the 2019 Petrona Award

Six outstanding crime novels from Denmark, Iceland and Norway have been shortlisted for the 2019 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, which is announced today.

THE ICE SWIMMER by Kjell Ola Dahl, tr. Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)

THE WHISPERER by Karin Fossum, tr. Kari Dickson (Harvill Secker; Norway)

THE KATHARINA CODE by Jørn Lier Horst, tr. Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)

THE DARKNESS by Ragnar Jónasson, tr. Victoria Cribb (Penguin Random House; Iceland)

RESIN by Ane Riel, tr. Charlotte Barslund (Doubleday; Denmark)

BIG SISTER by Gunnar Staalesen, tr. Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)

The winning title will be announced at the Gala Dinner on 11 May during the annual international crime fiction convention CrimeFest, held in Bristol on 9-12 May 2019. The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize, and the winning author will receive a full pass to and a guaranteed panel at CrimeFest 2020. 

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

The Petrona team would like to thank our sponsor, David Hicks, for his continued generous support of the Petrona Award. 

The judges’ comments on the shortlist:

There were 38 entries for the 2019 Petrona Award from six countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, Sweden). The novels were translated by 25 translators and submitted by 24 publishers/imprints. There were 14 female and 20 male authors, and two male-female writing duos. 

This year’s Petrona Award shortlist sees Norway strongly represented with four novels; Denmark and Iceland each have one. The crime genres represented include the police procedural, the private investigator novel, psychological crime, literary crime and the thriller.

The Petrona Award judges faced a challenging but enjoyable decision-making process when drawing up the shortlist. The six novels selected by the judges stand out for their writing, characterisation, plotting, and overall quality. They are original and inventive, often pushing the boundaries of genre conventions, and tackle highly complex subjects such as mental health issues, the effects of social and emotional alienation, and failures of policing and justice. 

We are extremely grateful to the translators whose expertise and skill allows readers to access these gems of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to the publishers who continue to champion and support translated fiction. 

The judges’ comments on each of the shortlisted titles:

THE ICE SWIMMER by Kjell Ola Dahl, tr. Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)

 Kjell Ola Dahl has achieved international acclaim for his ‘Oslo Detectives’ police procedural series, of which The Ice Swimmer is the latest instalment. When a dead man is found in the freezing waters of Oslo Harbour, Detective Lena Stigersand takes on the investigation while having to deal with some difficult personal issues. With the help of her trusted colleagues Gunnarstranda and Frølich, she digs deep into the case and uncovers possible links to the Norwegian establish-ment. Once again, Dahl has produced a tense and complex thriller, with his trademark close attention to social issues.  

THE WHISPERER by Karin Fossum, tr. Kari Dickson (Harvill Secker; Norway)

Winner of the prestigious Riverton Award and Glass Key Award for Nordic crime, Karin Fossum is a prolific talent. The Whisperer focuses on the case of Ragna Riegel, an unassuming woman with a complicated emotional history, who has recently been arrested. As Inspector Konrad Sejer delves into her psyche in the course of a claustrophobic interrogation, Fossum slowly reveals the events leading up to Ragna’s crime. This is a highly assured mix of police procedural and psychological thriller, which really gets to the heart of one woman’s mental turmoil, and how easy it is for an individual to become unmoored from society.

THE KATHARINA CODE by Jørn Lier Horst, tr. Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)

Jørn Lier Horst’s ‘William Wisting’ novels are distinguished by their excellent characterisation and strong plots. In The Katharina Code, a dormant investigation is reopened when police focus on a missing woman’s husband and his possible involvement in an earlier, apparently unconnected case. Wisting, who has long harboured doubts about the man’s innocence, becomes a somewhat unwilling participant in the surveillance operation. This finely plotted thriller with a strong sense of unresolved justice shows how Lier Horst is as comfortable writing about rural landscapes as urban settings. 

THE DARKNESS by Ragnar Jónasson, tr. Victoria Cribb (Penguin Random House; Iceland)

In Ragnar Jónasson’s The Darkness, the first in the ‘Hidden Iceland’ trilogy, a Reykjavík policewoman on the brink of retirement looks into a final case – the death of Elena, a young Russian woman, which may mistakenly have been labelled a suicide. As much a portrait of its flawed investigator, Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir, as of the investigation itself, the novel explores themes ranging from parental estrangement and the costs of emotional withdrawal to the precarious status of immigrants trying to make their way in a new land. The novel’s ending is bold and thought-provoking. 

RESIN by Ane Riel, tr. Charlotte Barslund (Doubleday; Denmark)

Ane Riel’s Resin is an ambitious literary crime novel with a remote Danish setting. Narrated mainly from the perspective of Liv, a young girl, it tells the story of three generations of one family, while exploring the complicated factors that can lead individuals to justify and commit murder. Other narrative voices – such as those of Liv’s mother and a neighbour – provide further nuance and depth. A moving meditation on the consequences of social isolation and misguided love, Resin is an innovative novel that offers its readers a keenly observed psychological portrait of a close-knit but dysfunctional family. 

BIG SISTER by Gunnar Staalesen, tr. Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)

In this highly acclaimed, long-running series, former social worker turned private investigator Varg Veum solves complex crimes which often have a strong historic dimension. In Big Sister, Veum is surprised by the revelation that he has a half-sister, who asks him to look into the whereabouts of her missing goddaughter, a nineteen-year-old trainee nurse. Expertly plotted, with an unsettling, dark undertone, this novel digs deep into Veum’s family past to reveal old secrets and hurts, and is by turns an absorbing and exciting read. 

The Frozen Woman by Jon Michelet extract

As part of The Frozen Woman blog tour we present an extract from the book. 

‘What was your first reaction when you found her,  Thygesen?’ Stribolt asks.

 Vilhelm Thygesen doesn’t answer. He has his eyes fixed on a point behind Stribolt, who observes the distracted look on Thygesen’s face and repeats the question in a sharper tone: ‘How did you react when you found the frozen body of the dead woman?’

‘There’s a woman trying to get in,’ Thygesen says, pointing with the stem of his pipe to the point he has been staring at. Stribolt wriggles on the leather sofa and catches sight of Vaage. She is standing on the glass veranda and fumbling with the handle of the door to Thygesen’s living room cum office. The low sun in the middle of the day, which is the second in February, a Friday, causes the frost patterns on the veranda window to glitter. Through the windows of the large log-house in Bestum the light angles in, giving the burlap wallpaper a warm glow, and is reflected by the golden letters on the spine of Norway’s Laws and other books on the shelves, causing the wisps of pipe smoke to become visible.

‘It’s not locked, but it’s awkward,’ Thygesen says, getting up and walking to the door.

Stribolt struggles to deal with the unreality of the situation. He is sitting here on official business in the home of a man whose sun he had thought had long since set. A murky legend who, it transpires, is a living legend.

Thygesen has a slight limp. His ponytail, which makes him look like an old hippie, swings back and forth. It doesn’t go with the Italian-tailored charcoal suit which Thygesen is wearing and definitely not the white shirt and grey-striped silk tie which matches the man’s hair almost too perfectly.

To Stribolt it is unimaginable that Thygesen should comb his mane into a ponytail and wear a fashionable suit on a daily basis. He had expected a scruffier turnout.

Leaving to meet Thygesen, he had assumed he would be confronted by a wreck, a shipwrecked mariner washed ashore on the sea of life.

Stribolt makes a note on his pad lying on the coffee table: T has tarted himself up for us.

Thygesen kicks the door as he twists the handle.

A cold blast of air enters from the veranda. It is freezer temperature outside: minus 18 degrees. Ruddy-faced Vaage has frost on her dark fringe. She looks even more apple cheeked and attractive than usual, Stribolt muses. Everytime he works with Vaage he thinks he will have to have his haircut as short as hers, take up squash again and get himself into shape. When he was last out on the town a slip of a girl told him he looked like a Buddha with a Beatles wig sliding off the back of his head. Not hard to say something like that when you are in the Buddha Bar, but he took it to heart and the sight of the clientele made him bristle with anger, all those tossers on financial steroids. Now it annoys him that Vaage is wearing an almost identical shiny blue pilot’s jacket to his. They aren’t in uniform. Although they look as if they are, just not a police uniform.

‘More like taxi drivers,’ Stribolt mumbles.

Vaage removes her gloves, shakes Thygesen’s hand and introduces herself.

‘I’m also a Kripos detective,’ she says. ‘A chief inspector like my colleague Stribolt here.’

‘Coffee?’ Thygesen asks. ‘I’ve put a pot on.’

‘No, thanks,’ Vaage says.

Stribolt accepts.

While Thygesen goes out, Vaage examines the room, clearly with some disapproval. Perhaps she thinks it is repugnant that a couple of logs are crackling away on the fire while a very cold woman is lying under a tarpaulin in a corner of Thygesen’s large, overgrown garden.

‘I thought this bugger Thygesen didn’t have two øre to rub together,’ Vaage says under her breath. ‘He’d gone to the dogs. Done for murder in the seventies, petty fraud in the nineties. Alkie and all-round dick. And then here he is, poncing around in this million-dollar pad in the West End of Oslo.’

‘It’s just a rambling old house,’ Stribolt says.

‘Imagine what he can get for this place, the plot alone.

Why’s he trying to trick old dears out of the odd krone when he has all this?’

‘It’s dangerous to give credence to rumours,’ Stribolt answers, turning down the volume of the stereo, which is playing a jazz CD, possibly Miles Davis. ‘Our friends at Grønland Police HQ are not always well informed. The two fraud charges against Thygesen were dropped for lack of evidence.’

‘What we have in the garden is murder,’ Vaage says.

‘Premeditated murder, I would think. The poor girl has been hacked about in every conceivable way.’

Vaage roams around restlessly and scrutinises a new, green transparent iMac on a computer desk, a thick book beside it, next to a south-facing window overlooking the garden.

‘Is Thygesen a member of some morose sect?’ she asks, lifting up the book.

Lichtturm is written on the cover in big letters.

‘I think it’s a stamp catalogue,’ Stribolt says, trying not to let his voice sound too cutting. He has never got used to the sudden changes in Vaage’s temperament and deals with her forthrightness badly every time. She can be as capricious as the weather on his childhood coast.

‘Right, I thought it might be one of those sect books,’ Vaage says.

‘Lighthouse or whatever it’s called. You’ve heard about Watchtower, haven’t you, Smartie Pants?’

The Frozen Woman by Jon Michelet (No Exit Press) translated by Don Bartlett

Hbk £12.99. Published September 21, 2017

A FROZEN BODY

A MURDERED BIKER

A RADICAL LAWYER WITH A MURKY PAST

In the depths of the Norwegian winter, the corpse of a woman is discovered in the garden of a notorious left-wing lawyer, Vilhelm Thygesen. She has been stabbed to death.  A young biker, a member of a gang once represented by Thygesen, dies in suspicious circumstances.  As Thygesen receives anonymous threats, investigating detectives Stribolt and Vaage uncover a web of crime and violence extending far beyond Norway’s borders.  Does the frozen woman hold the key?

Buy it from SHOTS A-Store.



Forty years with Varg Veum by Gunnar Staalesen

In June it is forty years since the first novel about Varg Veum was published in Norway. It bears the title Bukken til havresekken and is still not translated into English. The title comes from an old Norwegian saying: ‘You do not tell the buck to watch the bag of oats.’ (Bukken til havresekken translates directly as: ‘The buck to the bag of oats’.) The French edition was called: Le Loup dans la bergerie, which means ‘The wolf in the sheepfold’ and therefore has a similar meaning: ‘You don’t ask a wolf to look after the sheep.’ But in Germany it was simply called it: Das Haus mit der grünen Tür (‘The House with the Green Door’, which, interestingly, was my working title for the book, although I never told anyone about that. How did they know?!)

The book was an experiment. I wanted to move the traditional private eye novel from America to Norway, while taking account of the differences between the US of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and Norway in the 1970s. So Varg Veum was without doubt a close relative of Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer; but he was transformed into a Scandinavian, left-wing social democrat, with whom many of my readers at the time could sympathise. He had a different type of background too: he was originally a social worker, employed by the local authority to help children who were in difficult situations or came from families where their parents were not able to take care of them.

My inspiration as a crime writer originally came from the Swedish couple, Sjöwall & Wahlöö, who, between 1965 and 1975, had a huge impact on international crime fiction with their ten novels about the Stockholm-based police inspector Martin Beck. My first two crime novels (and the fourth) were police procedurals in more or less the same style as Sjöwall & Wahlöö, with added inspiration coming from the American writer Chester Himes and his books about Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. In the back of my head, however, there was also the traditional plotting I’d learnt by reading Agatha Christie, Quentin Patrick, Erle Stanley Gardner and many other great plot constructors. And I had, of course, read Arthur Conan Doyle and been fascinated by the combination of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson since I first read The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was twelve years old.

However, it was only when I read Raymond Chandler for the first time, in 1971, that I really understood what good literature a crime novel could be. At that time I had published two experimental novels that were more inspired by Jack Kerouac than by crime writers, but I could see the similarities between Kerouac and Chandler, particularly the poetic and playful language. This made me think: Perhaps – some day – a crime novel? After having more or less failed (I have to admit) as a mainstream, ‘serious’ novelist, I then started my career as a crime writer in 1975, with the first of my police procedurals, and in 1977 the first Varg Veum novel.

I have to admit that I was sceptical about the experiment myself: was it possible to transfer this American style of crime writing to Norway in the 70s? But no critic protested that you couldn’t set a private detective story in contemporary Bergen, and the readers loved it. Having finished my third and last police procedural, in 1979, I then wrote number two in what was now going to be the Varg Veum series: Yours until Death. This book is available in English.

In June 2017, my seventeenth novel in the series, Wolves in the Dark, is published in the UK and will be available as an ebook all over the world. During the forty years between the first book and this, Varg has aged only twenty-five years. (The action in this book takes place in 2002, when he is almost sixty.) But he is still has the same roots: shooting off one-liners like a stressed Philip Marlowe, and solving mysteries like a sad and disturbed Lew Archer. In this book Varg deals with one of the most difficult cases of his career: he is on the run from the police himself, at the same time as trying to find out who is seeking revenge on him, and why? The combination of these ‘who’ and ‘why’ questions forms the basis for most modern crime novels. But it is the ‘why’ that is perhaps even more important now than in the earlier periods of the genre; and this is certainly the case in Wolves in the Dark. 

The book also deals with a couple of big themes: the problem of hacking into private computers; and – more tragically – the abuse of children carried out by international groups; a problem that has been demonstrated by a big investigation being conducted by the police in Bergen right now, as I write these words.

It seems that the stuff crime novels are made of never goes away.

Kjell Ola Dahl on writing

I write across many genres: fiction, non-fiction, scripts and crime fiction. But always, when I board the Oslo Detectives Series rollercoaster, together with Gunnarstranda and my other police characters, I know I am going to have fun exploring Norway’s capital – researching its various neighbourhoods and discovering aspects of the city that have previously been more or less unknown to me.

Another thing I find interesting in these books is exploring the many sides of of my characters’ personalities. Faithless is part of this series; and while the story is still essentially a police procedural, in this particular book I wanted to put some pressure on my characters. In this novel my detective, Frank Frolich, learns how small the world is, and how this fact affects both his work and his private life. Overall, I wanted the story to demonstrate how people's actions always depend to some extent both on their personal history and on circumstances they cannot fully control.

As a police officer Frolich is a man with power and position. He meets a woman as part of a routine task, and suddenly realises that she is connected to him through other people, through his own history, and soon also his work. When she is killed, he is therefore involved, whether he wants to be or not. And he is forced to make some choices, some of which, inevitably, are wrong. Like everyone, he carries his personal history with him, but this situation makes him face it in an uncomfortable way.

I have to confess I wanted Frolich to sink. And I wanted this psychological sinking process to be reflected in the plot in a physical way: so, to solve the mystery he has to go underground. One important character in the story works as a municipal engineer, looking after Oslo’s sewage system. Researching this aspect of the book was fascinating: I spent days with engineers and workmen – walking down tunnels, wading through shit (literally) and driving through the city’s subsurface maze. I collected a huge amount of facts about what really goes on down there, under the city. But in the end, I was writing a book, so everything had to come down to the story. The usual ‘killing of darlings’ therefore meant that I used only small parts of this research in the novel.

Another thing I wanted to do in this novel was explore the personality of the female police character, Lena Stigersand. She plays only a minor role in earlier books in the series, but this time I wanted to get to know her better. I am afraid I am rather hard on her in Faithless (don’t worry – she gets her revenge on me in the next novel): she wants to be out in front, to make choices, and she has to face the consequences of this. Ultimately, she is forced to realise she is not able to fully control her own life. She learns that all it takes is to forget some small detail, or for things to change slightly, and sooner or later her plan fails.

The last one to learn new things in this novel is Gunnarstranda himself. He is in fact the most stubborn character in this universe. But, at the same time he is as solid as a rock – the centre around which all these stories circle. He has changed in some minor ways over the years, but his wit and intelligence make it very difficult for me to provoke him into any surprise moves. Neverthelss, this time I did manage to force him to reflect on the phenomenon of what you might call ‘unknown energies’. And in that, he surprised even me.

Faithless by Kjell Ola Dahl (published by Orenda Books)

Oslo detectives Gunnarstranda and Frølich are back … and this time, it’s personal… When the body of a woman turns up in a dumpster, scalded and wrapped in plastic, Inspector Frank Frølich is shocked to discover that he knows her … and their recent meetings may hold the clue to her murder. As he ponders the tragic events surrounding her death, Frølich’s colleague Gunnarstranda investigates a disturbingly similar cold case involving the murder of a young girl in northern Norway and Frølich is forced to look into his own past to find the answers – and the killer – before he strikes again.

Agnes Ravatn on How I Accidentally Wrote a Psychological Thriller

I was stuck. I had been working on my second novel for more than a year, but there was no progress. I did not know where my story was going, who the characters were, and every time I sat down in front of my computer to find out, I ended up on Facebook, or doing fake research for hours … or just watching movies. 

I told myself I was having really bad writer’s block, but deep down I knew very well that I just was a lazy, procrastinating Internet addict with no self-control. 

One day, I had had enough. It was a Friday in November, in the middle of the day. I had got no work done all week, and it felt like my life was over even before it had started. On impulse, I suddenly deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts, poured down two large glasses of red wine, and called my mum and asked her if I could borrow my parent’s cabin for a couple of days. Two days later, I was on the plane. I had brought warm clothes, all my best pens, and lots of paper, while my computer was left back home in Oslo. 

I arrived the cabin in the middle of the day, made coffee, and continued working on my humorous novel about Allis who almost by mistake takes a job as a gardener without knowing anything about gardening. After a couple of hours, I left the desk and went to the bathroom: the toilet was full of large spiders! I left the bathroom in horror, only to find out that while I was working, it had become completely dark outside. I could see people hiding behind the trees outside, looking in on me. I sat down, continued writing, then birds started screeching, owls hooting.

When it was time for bed, I was paralysed, too scared to cross the floor and go into the bedroom, afraid of what could be hiding in there, while all the time telling myself how silly it was to be thirty years old and afraid of the dark.  I finally got to bed, and had constant nightmares. I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, hearing a symphony orchestra playing outside, in the middle of the forest. I froze, until I realised it was just the sound of the river, right outside my door.

I stayed in that cabin for three weeks, alone and afraid, and when I finally returned home, I brought with me the first draft of a chilling, claustrophobic thriller. 

The Bird Tribunal by Agnes Ravatn is out now and is published by Orenda Books (£8.99)

Two people in exile. Two secrets. As the past tightens its grip, there may be no escape…  TV presenter Allis Hagtorn leaves her partner and her job to take voluntary exile in a remote house on an isolated fjord. But her new job as housekeeper and gardener is not all that it seems, and her silent, surly employer, 44- year-old Sigurd Bagge, is not the old man she expected. As they await the return of his wife from her travels, their silent, uneasy encounters develop into a chilling, obsessive relationship, and it becomes clear that atonement for past sins may not be enough…