Category: 20 Books of Summer

#BookReview Where Roses Never Die by Gunnar Staalesen, trans. by Don Bartlett @OrendaBooks

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Where Roses Never DieAbout the Book

September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found.

Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge…

Format: Paperback (272 pages)  Publisher: Orenda Books
Publication date: 1st June 2016 Genre: Crime, Thriller

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My Review

Where Roses Never Die is the eighteenth in the author’s crime series featuring private investigator, Varg Veum. It precedes the only other book in the series I’ve read, Wolves in the Dark. (Not all the books in the series have been translated into English.) But don’t worry if you haven’t read all, or even any, of the previous books in the series because Where Roses Never Die works perfectly well as a standalone.

The book finds Varg in a state that will be familiar to those who’ve read earlier books in the series. He’s recovering from a tragic event in his personal life and the three years since then have disappeared in a haze of booze. He feels he’s ‘wandering restlessly through life’s back streets’. His bank account is all but empty, the new cases have dried up and it’s a struggle to keep off the bottle. Recalling when he was at his worst, he observes, ‘I was the emperor of the empties, and I had hundreds of vassals, empty, silent and glassy-eyed’.

He needs something to rescue him from his ‘daily demons’ and what has become ‘the longest and darkest marathon’ of his life. The unsolved case of Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl who disappeared without trace nearly 25 years ago, may be just that. It might even give him the willpower, and an excuse, to remain sober.

Varg sets about investigating the case with his customary dogged determination, even going so far as to pick the brains of an old adversary, the now retired Inspector Dankert Muus who handled the case originally. He interviews the residents and former residents of Solstølen Co-Op, a community of five houses. Some of them are extremely reluctant to talk to him. What is it they have to hide? Varg discovers a complex web of connections but one which for a long time seems just to confuse the situation not make it clearer.  It’s a seemingly random, unconnected event that brings about a breakthrough but not before Varg has found himself in a series of sticky situations and uncovered some pretty dark stuff.

Is Mette still alive? If so, who was responsible for her disappearance and how has she remained undiscovered all these years? You’ll have to read the book to discover the answers to those questions and I’ll be very surprised if you find them before Varg.

Varg Veum
Life-sized statue of Varg Veum in the centre of Bergen

Varg Veum is a wonderful character. He’s quick-witted and not easily dissuaded from a course of action. Yes, he’s flawed, a little world-weary and often consumed by dark thoughts but he always remains likeable because of his strong sense of justice, wry sense of humour and the fact he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I was pleased that the end of the book holds out the possibility of a little light coming into Varg’s life once again.

Where Roses Never Die is a skilfully-crafted, compelling crime mystery with plenty of twists and turns.

In three words: Gripping, intriguing, unsettling

Try something similar: End of Summer by Anders de la Motte

Gunnar Staalesen

About the Author

One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, 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 titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour). Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted for the award in 2019. He lives with his wife in Bergen. (Photo/bio: Publisher website)

About the Translator

Don Bartlett lives with his family in a village in Norfolk. He 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 Karl Ove Knausgaard.

#BookReview #Ad The Girl from Simon’s Bay by Barbara Mutch

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The Girl From Simon's BayAbout the Book

1937. Louise Ahrendts, daughter of a shipbuilder, is at home in Simon’s Town, a vibrant community in the Union of South Africa, with a Royal Navy port at its heart. Louise dreams of becoming a nurse and in a world of unwritten, unspoken rules about colour, she has the strength to make it a reality.

The outbreak of the Second World War brings a man into Louise’s world who she is determined to be with – despite all the obstacles life and conflict throw in their way. But when a new troubled moment of history dawns, can they find their way back to each other?

Format: Paperback (416 pages)              Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 21st September 2017  Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Although her family are not well-off, Louise has an idyllic childhood growing up in sight of the sea where she swims most days or watches her friend, Piet, dive for shells. Located on the shores of False Bay in the shadow of the Simonsberg mountains, Simon’s Town is a fishing community and the location of a Royal Navy port that provides employment for many of the townspeople, including Louise’s father.  On the surface Simon’s Town is a multi-racial community with people of different colours and heritage living peacefully together. However, at a national level, the issue of race is never far away.

Louise’s parents see her future as finding a nice local boy and settling down to a life as wife and mother. However, Louise dreams of becoming a nurse: she wants to ‘fix’ people.  Her ambition seems doomed to failure from the beginning, not because of her educational achievements or her commitment but because she is ‘coloured’. As the Matron of False Bay Hospital to which she applies writes, ‘I must caution you that no coloured applicant from a Simon’s Town school has ever been accepted’.  However, Louise is not one to give up and eventually her persistence is rewarded. ‘Slowly, one person at a time, False Bay Hospital was learning to value my ability rather than scorning my background.’ Louise comes to believe that through the recognition of her nursing skills she has overcome the barriers of race, but as her mother cautions, ‘War has no time for a colour bar… The old ways will return in peacetime mark my words.’

Louise’s proficiency results in a secondment to the Royal Naval Hospital looking after men injured in the war, often critically. ‘This was no civilian establishment with a routine quota of tonsils and broken legs. This was nursing on the edge.’ It’s here that Louise meets Lieutenant David Horrocks with whom she instantly forms a bond as a result of their shared love of the sea and the landscape of the Cape peninsular.

Fraternisation between nurse and patient is frowned upon by the hospital establishment; a relationship between a white officer and a coloured woman is unthinkable.  As their relationship develops, Louise and David are forced to meet in secret. But fear of disclosure or the danger David faces whenever his ship goes to sea is not the only obstacle facing them, as Louise will discover. It will mean an agonising decision, the consequences of which will determine the future path of their lives, and of others too.

Two thirds of the way through the story moves to thirty years later and shifts from being predominantly a wartime romance to one about the impact of apartheid on families like Louise’s with previously mixed communities being dispersed and segregated according to colour. This was something I knew about vaguely but the author really brings to life the realities for individuals and communities. It means Louise is separated from the seascape she loves so much and which has been the backdrop to her life.  And the effective purging of non-white South Africans from official records, along with a reluctance by many to revisit events of the past, risks a connection being severed forever.

The Girl from Simon’s Bay is a moving love story set against the backdrop of war and social upheaval.

I received a review copy courtesy of Allison & Busby.

In three words: Tender, romantic, absorbing

Try something similar: Think of Me by Frances Liardet

Barbara MutchAbout the Author

Barbara was born and brought up in South Africa, the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. Before embarking on a writing career, she launched and managed a number of businesses both in South Africa and the UK. She is married and has two sons.

For most of the year the family lives in Surrey but spends time whenever possible at their home in the Cape. When not writing, Barbara is a pianist, a keen enthusiast of the Cape’s birds and landscape or fynbos.

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