When Bergen PI Varg Veum finds himself at the funeral of a former classmate on a sleet-grey December afternoon, he's unexpectedly reunited with his old friend Jakob - guitarist of the once-famous 1960s rock band The Harpers - and his estranged wife, Rebecca, Veum's first love.
Their rekindled friendship is thrown into jeopardy by the discovery of a horrific murder, and Veum is forced to dig deep into his own adolescence and his darkest memories, to find a motive ... and a killer.
Tense, vivid and deeply unsettling, Fallen Angels is the spellbinding, award-winning thriller that secured Gunnar Staalesen's reputation as one of the world's foremost crime writers.
***
***
(@OrendaBooks, 25 September 2020, 276 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 5 November)
***
***
Why have I never heard of the author before? This must be rectified immediately. Fallen Angels was great. I need to read more by the author. This is not like traditional crime novels and Staalesen uses a unique approach. Varg is a PI and in a typical novel someone would hire him to investigate something. Fallen Angels does something a bit different. A lot of chapters at the start focus on Varg being reunited with his old friends at the funeral and struggling to bond with the people who were once the centre of the world. The murder doesn't happen until a few chapters in. This was a bit unusual but works really well because by the time the crime happens, I already had a good grasp of all the characters. I loved reading about Varg's reunion with his old friends, there were a lot of awkward moments as everyone realised how much they'd changed over the years and how little they had in common. This felt very realistic. The murder is typically brutal and while looking into it Varg uncovers horrible skeletons hidden in the closets of his oldest and dearest friends.