Finally getting going with the reviews for 2021. As you will have seen from my last post, New Year's Day was a bit of a downer, but now that lockdown has been confirmed, again, it is just a case of Getting on With It. So here we go.
A few months ago I was sent a recommendation by Amazon, one of those "if you liked that you might like this" thingys and they suggested the Wisting series of detective novels by John Lier Horst. Their computer system has obviously logged I read a fair bit of so called Scandi-Noir and recommended these. The taster was a title at 99p which is always a temptation because even if you find you do not like the book much you have hardly bankrupted yourself.
As it turned out I really enjoyed the first one I read. So, naturally, I then went online and one by one bought the rest. Well you know I would.
William Wisting is a Chief Inspector in the CID at Larvik, Norway. He is in his fifties at the start of the series and has two children, Thomas and Line. He is a widower and though he does have a new relationship throughout the stories it is fairly tepid, or so it seems to me, as he still mourns his wife Ingrid. His son Thomas, who is in the army and away most of the time, features so little in these books that I wonder why the author bothered with him to be honest, but perhaps he will feature more in the future. The main character alongiside Wisting is his daughter Line who is an investigative journalist based in Oslo and, of course, quite a few of the cases she chases intersect with her father. She has the knack, which can infuriate the reader or make them laugh, depending on your viewpoint, of getting in the way, getting too involved and then having to be rescued by her father and the Larvik police force. I would find her a bit of a pain to be honest and I did when I started reading. Later, I warmed to her a bit more.
Alison Graham, who is the editor of the rather quaintly named Radio Times, though the days of just radio are long gone, writes amusing articles each week and her latest one if called "Get in Here Now" and subtitled "If your're a maverick cop beware the Jobsworth Boss" and goes on to cite various police series where this relationship exists. She is spot on because such a Jobsworth Boss, who is also ambitious and craves promotion, features in the Wisting books as well - Auden Vetti - with whom Wisting clashes. You can take it as read that he gets his comeuppance in due course.
Wisting also has his friends and colleagues who he has worked with for years and the books have a very satisfying feel about them. I read them out of order, because of the 99p offer which set me off on the trail, but I am not sure that this is a real problem though if you do start them then it would probably be better to not take my route and start at number one.
Here is a link to the author's page on Amazon so you can see all the titles. I have now read all the Wisting ones and note that he has written a couple of others with another person so may give those a whirl.
As I said these are satisfying books to read. They are good, solid, well written and I really like them very much. They are not gung ho with mad shoot outs and grisly details (though Horst does not finch from this when a serial killer is involved) and there are chase sequences etc but the main emphasis is on the detecting and the solving of each case and the inner thoughts of Wisting who is a Good Man and a Good Policeman. I honestly think that writers make their detectives and cops difficult and maverick (yes that word again) because it is more exciting but I do not think this is necessarily the case. Certainly not if you look back at the Golden Age of crime writing where the solving and resolving was the main focus.
Wisting reminds me very much of Inspector French in the crime novels of Freeman Wills Croft. Painstaking, concentrating on the clues, the minutiae and the gradually unravelling of the puzzle. Some people say they find this tedious and do not like his books, but police work is most of the time - it is plodding along, hence the somewhat derogatory usage of the word Plod to describe the foot soldiers who just get on with it.
I fear I may have made these books by Horst sound boring and dull which is not my intention. I can recommend them for a thoroughly satisfying read. There was a BBC4 production last year which is what led me to this author and was very well done.
Well the problem now is what series to read next? I do like to have one lined up and then along comes Amazon and sends me a 99p offer for a book by Catherine Aird who I had heard of but never read. So I bought it, loved it, well written, great puzzle and also funny and then checked her out and found that I have another 26 to go.
So guess what I am going to do next....
Recent Comments