Mirror Image

By Gunnar Staalesen

Translated by Don Bartlett

Published by Orenda Books https://orendabooks.co.uk/ @OrendaBooks

285 pages ISBN 9781914585944

Publication date 31 August 2023

Mirror Image is the eleventh novel in the Varg Veum thriller series.

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

The Cover

Love the cover, a little dark and certainly full of foreboding. What is the significance of a reflection of two people seemingly looking at ripples in the water?

From the blurb

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 into the sea, in an apparent double suicide.

My thoughts

Classic Nordic Noir from one of the masters of the genre, so get yourself comfy and prepare like me to become engrossed. Its dark at times but with some nuance, and is jam-packed with twists, misdirection and lies.

The great scientist Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” A maxim that Varg Veum quickly learns the truth of in this investigation. He is trying to locate a married couple, Bodil and Fernando, who disappeared around Easter. The week after Easter he was engaged by the Bodil’s sister Berit, a successful lawyer, who appears reluctant to involve the police. She claims she is trying to avoid embarrassment if it turns out they have just gone on holiday, but Veum ends up pondering this more than once. Veum’s questioning of family and friends unearths leads to follow, but they appear to connect with the events of 1957 when Bodil and Berit’s mother died in tragic circumstances.

The novel is set in the then contemporary (1993) but regularly returns to the momentous events of 1957. To Veum it seems easier to solve that mystery as the secrets held for 36 years are now being more easily given up. The burden of carrying them for so long has been so heavy, it seems now is the time for the truth to be finally told. Will these disclosures help Veum in 1993?

Mirror Image is a perfect title and as the reader will quickly realise the story has much in common with literary tragedy, one where history is destined to repeat itself. Throughout the present there are so many echoes of the past, that it almost feels like a kind of parallel existence, one in which destiny is inevitable. Even the musical theme fits in, with a genre in which proponents are so often melancholic and tragic.

The plotting and structuring are wonderfully tight, centring on family and lovers, and their strained sometime internecine relationships. These complex relationships, which at times feel almost incestuous, that are protected by a bodyguard of lies. Veum is a PI of course and people are not obliged to tell him the truth and throughout he is told a mixture of part truths and lies. These are so cleverly constructed that the reader will struggle as much as Veum to pick out the truth, which will have you enthralled to the (bitter) end.

Veum refuses to do matrimonial cases (wise man) but these investigations take him dangerously close. At their core are love and relationships, with infatuation, obsession and lust, but these also lead to betrayal, control and revenge. A crime of passion if you must, but to Veum its all too premeditated, too preordained and still a crime. This he approaches with his sanguine, slightly jaded persona, the PI who has seen it all and heard all the excuses. He’s much more of a rounded human than the hard-boiled wise cracking PIs we are all familiar with, he is of course troubled but has a settled existence. Seemingly satisfied with a LAT (living apart together) relationship with Karin, he hasn’t lived with anyone since his wife Beata left him. Not exactly happy, but not wallowing in self-pity, simply getting on with life the best way he knows how. He also has good taste in music.

There is a side runner to the main plot which helps to build up the intrigue and the pool of suspects. Fernando works for a shipping company, a respected and long established one, but one in which some rogue elements are at work. This introduces the freelance investigative journalist Torunn Tafjord who adds depth and sense of freedom to the story. Bold and fearless, but very easy going, she quickly makes a big impression on Veum when they finally meet. Kindred spirits who could easily become soul mates, their blossoming friendship brings a ray of sunshine to a dark tale.

It is so easy to overlook the work of the translator. It’s one of those situations where, like defensive midfield footballers, if you haven’t noticed them, then they have been on top of their game. Once again Don Bartlett produces translated prose that could have been originally written in English and if ‘ship-shape and Bergen fashion’ isn’t in common usage in Norway, then it really should be.

Mirror Image is classic Nordic Noir; a dark and twisty look at love and the human condition, with disturbing echoes of the past.

Mirror Image can be purchased direct from the publisher here

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). Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted for the award in 2019. He lives with his wife in Bergen.

The translator

Don Bartlett lives with his family in a village in Norfolk. He 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 Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Don’t forget to check out the other reviews on this Blog Tour: