An interesting plot but I found the pacing uneven.
This multi-layered story begins in 2010, with a homeless twenty-one-year-old man observing a woman in her late thirties staggering around in the street ‘well and truly plastered’. She beckons him over and, as he’d hoped she would, invites him to go home with her. He’s really only interested in finding some food and shelter for the night so he’s taken aback when she suggests that they ‘make a baby together’. Protesting that he is gay, and the last thing he wants is a child, he is persuaded by her offer of ten thousand kroner in cash to leave a sample of his sperm. That’s all she wants from him, she has no interest in knowing even his name, although he does discover hers when he looks in her purse after she tells him to leave but disappears into the bathroom before he does so.
The timeline then shifts to the sniper attack in 2019, when Selma was shot in the arm and her friend Linda was killed. With her celebrity status and high-profile presence on social media, it was hardly surprising that the police, the media and the general public automatically assumed that Selma was the intended victim. However, when Birgar Jal Nilson, the police ballistics expert, presents forensic evidence which appears to suggest that Linda was indeed the sniper’s target, and when further murders of people linked to government scandals concerning the withholding of social security benefits and contentious child welfare cases appear to support his hypothesis, it becomes clear that the focus of the investigation needs to shift.
The various strands in the developing plot are fairly quickly introduced. These include the police investigation, led by Fredrik Smedstuen; Selma’s cooperation with him and with Lars, a journalist she has worked with in the past and who is now investigating a scandal involving child welfare services; her engaging the help of her old friend Einar, a traumatised, delusional and paranoid ex-policeman, to help her with her research; a government scandal, and occasional interjections from an unnamed man, whose contributions to the narrative come as he makes visits to his late-wife’s grave. However, as is to be expected in any novel in this genre, their relevance and interconnectedness is obscured by countless red herrings. The tension in the story is increased by the mystery surrounding how someone is gaining access to Selma’s flat, leaving cryptic clues to indicate that the person knows things about her which aren’t common knowledge. This breach of her security, combined with her involvement in the shooting, has led her daughter, Anine, to refuse to allow Selma to have any contact with her beloved five-month-old grandson, something which is so upsetting that it threatens to derail her determination not to give in to the gambling addiction which has caused such problems between her and Anine in the past. Although the links between these strands do eventually come together there were moments, particularly about half way through the story, when I thought that the narrative ‘journey’ towards this resolution was becoming rather meandering and I found myself losing interest. This did improve in the final third but it meant that at times the storytelling felt somewhat uneven. However, I think it’s possible that some of my lack of engagement was caused by the translation because it contained some rather odd syntax and word choice, meaning that I quite often needed to re-read sentences before being able to make sense of them.
Without running the risk of entering ‘spoiler’ territory, I think it’s safe enough to say that I think the author made excellent use of some real-life political and bureaucratic scandals in Norway to underpin her plot and to provide a credible resolution. I hadn’t been aware of these issues but reading this story piqued my interest sufficiently to encourage me to learn more about them … and to discover that they sound all too depressingly familiar!
This is the third book in the author’s series featuring Selma Falck who, judging from her portrayal in this story, is narcissistic, apparently feels no qualms about using relationships to her own advantage, giving little thought to the feelings of others and yet is also capable of showing genuine caring, as demonstrated in her relationship with Einar and her feelings for her baby grandson. So, although I did find it possible to read this as a stand-alone novel, as there were so many references to previous incidents and relationships, I’m sure I would have found it easier to understand, and warm to, this deeply flawed and complex character had I read the books in sequence.
The timeline then shifts to the sniper attack in 2019, when Selma was shot in the arm and her friend Linda was killed. With her celebrity status and high-profile presence on social media, it was hardly surprising that the police, the media and the general public automatically assumed that Selma was the intended victim. However, when Birgar Jal Nilson, the police ballistics expert, presents forensic evidence which appears to suggest that Linda was indeed the sniper’s target, and when further murders of people linked to government scandals concerning the withholding of social security benefits and contentious child welfare cases appear to support his hypothesis, it becomes clear that the focus of the investigation needs to shift.
The various strands in the developing plot are fairly quickly introduced. These include the police investigation, led by Fredrik Smedstuen; Selma’s cooperation with him and with Lars, a journalist she has worked with in the past and who is now investigating a scandal involving child welfare services; her engaging the help of her old friend Einar, a traumatised, delusional and paranoid ex-policeman, to help her with her research; a government scandal, and occasional interjections from an unnamed man, whose contributions to the narrative come as he makes visits to his late-wife’s grave. However, as is to be expected in any novel in this genre, their relevance and interconnectedness is obscured by countless red herrings. The tension in the story is increased by the mystery surrounding how someone is gaining access to Selma’s flat, leaving cryptic clues to indicate that the person knows things about her which aren’t common knowledge. This breach of her security, combined with her involvement in the shooting, has led her daughter, Anine, to refuse to allow Selma to have any contact with her beloved five-month-old grandson, something which is so upsetting that it threatens to derail her determination not to give in to the gambling addiction which has caused such problems between her and Anine in the past. Although the links between these strands do eventually come together there were moments, particularly about half way through the story, when I thought that the narrative ‘journey’ towards this resolution was becoming rather meandering and I found myself losing interest. This did improve in the final third but it meant that at times the storytelling felt somewhat uneven. However, I think it’s possible that some of my lack of engagement was caused by the translation because it contained some rather odd syntax and word choice, meaning that I quite often needed to re-read sentences before being able to make sense of them.
Without running the risk of entering ‘spoiler’ territory, I think it’s safe enough to say that I think the author made excellent use of some real-life political and bureaucratic scandals in Norway to underpin her plot and to provide a credible resolution. I hadn’t been aware of these issues but reading this story piqued my interest sufficiently to encourage me to learn more about them … and to discover that they sound all too depressingly familiar!
This is the third book in the author’s series featuring Selma Falck who, judging from her portrayal in this story, is narcissistic, apparently feels no qualms about using relationships to her own advantage, giving little thought to the feelings of others and yet is also capable of showing genuine caring, as demonstrated in her relationship with Einar and her feelings for her baby grandson. So, although I did find it possible to read this as a stand-alone novel, as there were so many references to previous incidents and relationships, I’m sure I would have found it easier to understand, and warm to, this deeply flawed and complex character had I read the books in sequence.