The Assistant

By: Kjell Ola Dahl

Narrated by: Mark Meadows

Oslo, 1938. War is in the air and Europe is in turmoil. Hitler’s Germany has occupied Austria and is threatening Czechoslovakia; there’s a civil war 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, and when Jack is accused of murder, the trail leads back to the 1920s, to prohibition-era Norway, to the smugglers, sex workers and hoodlums of his criminal past and an extraordinary secret.

©2020 Kjell Ola Dahl; Translation © Don Bartlett, 2021 (P)2021 Isis Publishing Ltd

OK Mystery Read

Style similar to first Dahl book I read: Continual "Flash Backs" to previous times to fill in the historical gaps.