Salmon are renowned for fighting their way upstream against the prevailing current, and it’s a suitable metaphor for Pursued By Death, Gunnar Staalesen’s latest in his long-running Varg Veum series.
Salmon are featured heavily in this tale, with salmon farming being the main industry in the sparsely populated village of Solvik. It is not the harmonious mix of commerce and nature it may first seem, tensions running high between commercial investors, environmental protestors and bickering long-running feuds.
When one of the local environmental protestors goes missing it sparks an initial missing person investigation that sounds takes a darker turn when the body count begins to rise.
Thrown into this mix by chance is Bergen Private Investigator Var Veum. Realising he’s met the missing person in question he soon gets drawn into wider investigations that suggest this is the latest in a series of unexplained but potentially linked deaths.
Staalesen toys with his readers here, there’s no huge set pieces, instead, we’re given very much the slow burn as long-repressed truths bubble to the surface. It’s a fitting pace for the small village, a place where life runs at a slightly slower pace than the urban towns. It’s a place where outsiders are viewed with caution, where family trees intertwine and where gossip has equal currency to truth.
It’s a place where Veum feels very much an outsider, even the language conspiring against him as the second of the Norwegian languages, Nynorsk, takes prevalence over the more common Bokmål. It all adds to a sense of tension bubbling beneath the surface.
Staalesen weaves his plot lines carefully, throwing in small details that initially seem irrelevant, only to show significance several chapters later. It’s all about creating the bigger picture and it’s a bigger picture that Staalesen paints perfectly.
That slow burn pace though doesn’t mean there’s no action here. Staalesen weaves his plot lines carefully, throwing in small details that initially seem irrelevant, only to show significance several chapters later. It’s all about creating the bigger picture and it’s a bigger picture that Staalesen paints perfectly.
As the body count grows, albeit some historical, the plots begin to twist as much as the serpentine fjord roads. The ending is worthy of Agatha Christie herself, a confrontation with the perpetrator that not only shocks the reader but also those present. It’s a plot twist readers will have been unlikely to have foreseen coming and one that attests to Staalsen’s storytelling skills.
For Staalesen, though, location is just as important as character and in Pursued By Death he brings the fjords to life, the remote valleys and their traditions adding vital colour to the storytelling. Folk legends about trolls sit just as importantly alongside the well-observed police procedural.
Verum books have become an eagerly anticipated release and while our investigator is perhaps more reflective here than in earlier works, there’s no sign of Bergen’s most popular detective slowing down and entering retirement just yet.
Pursued By Death by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett is out now in ebook and released in paperback by Orenda Books on 29 August 2024.
