Orenda Books Archives - The Quick and the Read

Blog Tour: ‘The Assistant’ by Kjell Ola Dahl

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘The Assistant’ by Kjell Ola Dahl, a twisty historical Nordic Noir thriller.

With thanks to Random Things Tours and Orenda Books for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

From the Publisher:

The new historical thriller from the author of the award-winning The Courier,
which was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger and the Petrona Award.

The award-winning Godfather of Nordic Noir returns with a fascinating and richly authentic portrait of Oslo’s interwar years, featuring Nazis operating secretly on Norwegian soil and militant socialists readying workers for war…

Oslo, 1938. War is in the air and Europe is in turmoil. Hitler ’s Germany has occupied Austria and is threatening Czechoslovakia; civil war rages in Spain and Mussolini reigns in Italy.

When a woman turns up at the office of police-turned-private investigator Ludvig Paaske, he and his assistant – his one-time nemesis and former drug-smuggler, Jack Rivers – begin a seemingly straightforward investigation into marital infidelity.

But all is not what it seems. Soon, Jack is accused of murder, sending them on a trail which leads back to the 1920s, to prohibition-era Norway, to the smugglers, sex workers and hoodlums of his criminal past … and an extraordinary secret.

My Review:

Regular visitors to my blog will know I’m all about the setting…I love historical fiction that transports me to another time and place. With that in mind, I jumped at the chance to join the blog tour for this historical thriller set in prohibition-era Norway.

I’ll be honest – I had no clue that Norway had even had a prohibition era prior to reading this book. Every day’s a school day!

The novel opens with Jack Rivers, a smuggler of illegal alcohol and the main character in the book, on the run from the police after someone whistle-blows on his latest delivery. The book then cuts between this version of Jack in rural Norway in the 1920s and him in Oslo in 1938.

In the Oslo 1938 sections, Jack and his previous nemesis, Ludvig Paaske, have joined forces as private investigators and are asked to look into a possible case of marital infidelity. However, things aren’t so simple and they find themselves in a situation with much higher stakes…one that seems to lead back to Jack’s past.

As anticipated, the historical setting was just perfect for me. I loved the details about Oslo, especially the evocation of the slightly sinister waterfront area and all the places that sound gloriously exotic and fascinating to my very English ears – Oscarshall castle, Frognerkilen, Torggata, Besserud Station. Probably not remotely glamorous, but they add to the atmosphere of the novel beautifully and it does feel a little like walking the streets of Oslo with Jack.

The historical moment is also interesting – this is a Europe poised on the brink of war and little reminders infiltrate the events of the novel without overwhelming the narrative: a conversation about war, a reference to Hitler, a German ship in the port. It all adds a layer of tension to the plot as Hitler’s Germany begins to threaten the peace in Europe and civil war rages in Spain. This feels like a dangerous moment for Jack and Ludvig to be caught up in political affairs.

The plotting of the book is extremely clever – at first, I couldn’t imagine how Jack and Ludvig came to be working together given their 1920s lives. However, it all fits together neatly and the revelations come thick and fast once the pair begin working on the mysterious case. I loved how the lives of the main characters were so interwoven – there was a kind of claustrophobia in how they kept being drawn back to their past lives and connections.

This book – a stand alone, so no prior knowledge expected – would make such a perfect film. There were so many parts of the novel that seemed almost cinematic, not least the lit window that becomes a theatre for the watching Jack – it all made me think of Edward Hopper paintings and film noir. It would be extremely dark and atmospheric – this is a book of misty ferry journeys, grim autopsy rooms, car headlights slicing through darkness.

My only wish was for there to be more women in the novel. I guess it is a feature of both the genre and time period, but I really wanted some more strong female representation – just my personal preference!

Overall, this is a lively and engaging historical thriller. It ticks boxes for pace, plotting, twists, a fabulous sense of place, sinister atmosphere, dodgy dealings and some really shady people. I’d love to read more by this writer…and definitely think the film rights should be snapped up soon!

About the Author:

One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Kjell Ola Dahl was born in 1958 in Gjøvik. He made his debut in 1993, and has since published eighteen novels, the most prominent of which form a series of police procedurals-cum-psychological thrillers featuring investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix, and he won both the prestigious Brage and Riverton Prizes for The Courier in 2015 (published in English by Orenda books in 2019). His work has been published in fourteen countries. He lives in Oslo. Follow him on Twitter @ko_dahl

About Orenda Books

Orenda Books is a small independent publishing company specialising in literary fiction with a heavy emphasis on crime/thrillers, and approximately half the list in translation. Orenda Books was voted WINNER of the CWA Dagger for Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year in 2020. They’ve been twice shortlisted for the Nick Robinson Best Newcomer Award at the IPG awards, and publisher and owner Karen Sullivan was a Bookseller Rising Star in 2016. In 2018, they were awarded a prestigious Creative Europe grant for their translated books programme.

Three authors, including Agnes Ravatn, Matt Wesolowski and Amanda Jennings have been WHSmith Fresh Talent picks, and Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, won an English PEN Translation Award, and adapted for BBC Radio Four ’s Book at Bedtime. Ten titles have been short- or longlisted for the CWA Daggers; Doug Johnstone has been shortlisted (twice) for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year and Helen FitzGerald, Matt Wesolowski and Will Carver have been long /shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

Launched in 2014 with a mission to bring more international literature to the UK market, Orenda Books publishes a host of debuts, many of which have gone on to sell millions worldwide, and looks for fresh, exciting new voices that push the genre in new directions. Bestselling authors include Ragnar Jonasson, Antti Tuomainen, Gunnar Staalesen, Michael J. Malone, Kjell Ola Dahl, Louise Beech, Johana Gustawsson, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Helen FitzGerald, Doug Johnstone and Will Carver.

www.orendabooks.co.uk
@OrendaBooks

‘Blue Night’ by Simone Buchholz (translated by Rachel Ward)

I was lucky to win a set of the books published so far in the Chastity Riley series – thanks to lovely Jen on Twitter.

This series is published by the fab people at Orenda Books and is bestselling in its native country, Germany.

Given all the excellent things I’d heard about this series, plus the fact that all four gorgeous novels had just arrived in the post, I thought I’d give it a go. Obviously, Book 1 was my starting point, so in I went with ‘Blue Night’.

One of the hugely appealing things about the series is that it is set in Hamburg, a place I visited a few years ago. Buchholz’s Hamburg is a seedy and corrupt place, filled with drug dealers, gangsters and prostitutes in the famous Reeperbahn district. I’d like to point out that this is a way away from the Hamburg my family experienced – the Miniatur Wunderland with its huge model railway was more our thing – but it was nice to be able to picture some of the settings and buildings mentioned in the novel.

The story centres on a mysterious man in hospital after a brutal attack. Chastity Riley, our heroine and a state prosecutor, is assigned to his case and immediately senses that there is something worth following up. Initially the man is uncooperative, but Chastity soon wins him over with her contraband alcohol and tobacco smuggled into the hospital. This puts her on the trail of a huge case involving synthetic drugs and one of Hamburg’s criminal overlords…

Hopefully, everything I’ve written so far has given the impression that this is a dark book! It is similar in style to some of the Nordic Noir books that I’ve read – a kind of Hamburg Noir packed with sweary and straight-talking people, drugs and heavy drinking, gritty storylines and a shadowy criminal underworld.

As much as I love Nordic Noir, I was so pleased to find that this book was considerably funnier than some of its Scandinavian counterparts. Chastity is a fabulous narrator with a dry sense of humour and a lively turn of phrase – I’m not sure whether to credit Buchholz herself for this or some nifty translation work by Rachel Ward. All of Chastity’s first-person narration is written in her distinctive, sweary, colloquial voice – and it works brilliantly. It’s like being told a story by a really indiscreet, funny, brutally honest friend.

I did find it harder to get my head around some of the other characters in the book – I think they will come into their own later in the series perhaps. In particular, I loved cafe owners Carla and Rocco – Chastity’s friends – and wanted to see more of them as being slightly more of the ‘normal’ world outside the crime and law enforcement community.

Although most of the book is told by Chastity, there are sections that form flashbacks in multiple voices involved with the story. At the start, it isn’t obvious who some of them are but it becomes clearer – a really clever device that filled in gaps in Chastity’s narrative, dropped clues and gave some back-story.

Overall, I found this an engaging and lively series opener – I will definitely carry on and read the rest. I loved the narrative voice, even though the story was grittier than my usual choice of books, and I’d recommend that everyone take a peek into Chastity’s Hamburg underworld.

If you’d like a copy of this book (or the later books in the series – presented in order here), please use my affiliate link below. Thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases.

WWW Wednesday – 7th April, 2021

WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted at Taking on a World of Words. Anyone can take part and it is a great way of sharing what you have just finished reading, what you are currently reading and what is next on the TBR.