Mirror Image

Overview

As Bergen PI Varg Veum investigates two different cases, it becomes clear that they are uncannily similar to harrowing events that took place thirty-six years earlier… A gripping instalment of the award-winning Varg Veum series, by one of the fathers of Nordic Noir.

`As searing and gripping as they come´ New York Times

`One of my very favourite Scandinavian authors´ Ian Rankin

`The Norwegian Chandler´ Jo Nesbø

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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.

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`Every inch the equal of his Nordic confreres Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbø´ Independent

`Staalesen continually reminds us he is one of the finest of Nordic novelists´ Financial Times

`There are only two other writers that I know of have achieved the depth of insight in detective writing that Staalesen has: Chandler, and Ross MacDonald …´ Mystery Tribune

`Employs Chandleresque similes with a Nordic Noir twist … simply superb´ Wall Street Journal

`Masterful pacing´ Publishers Weekly

`The Varg Veum series is more concerned with character and motivation than spectacle, and it's in the quieter scenes that the real drama lies´ Herald Scotland

For fans of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Jorn Lier Horst, Harlan Coben and Jussi Adler-Olsen

Reviews

Author Biography

One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, 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-three titles, which have been published in twenty-six countries and sold over five million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Epsen Seim, and a further series is currently being filmed.

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.