Bitter Flowers

PI Varg Veum has returned to duty following a stint in rehab, but his new composure and resolution are soon threatened when three complex cases arrive on his desk in quick succession. A man is found dead in an elite swimming pool and a young woman has gone missing.

Most chillingly, Varg Veum is asked to investigate the ‘Camilla Case’: an eight-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a little girl who was never found. As the threads of these three apparently unrelated cases come together, against the backdrop of a series of shocking environmental crimes, Varg Veum faces the most challenging, traumatic investigation of his career.

©1991 Gunnar Staalesen (P)2022 Oakhill

Not as good as Staalesen's later novels

Though Bitter Flowers was published in English only this year, it is actually one of Staalesen's earlier novels, having come out in Norwegian in 1991, and it is not nearly as good as the later Varg Veum novels. It is way overwritten—too many elaborate similes—and Mark Meadow's melodramatic narration doesn't help. (The narrator for the earlier audiobooks in English, Colin Mace, was much better.