Bitter Flowers by Gunnar Staalesen

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the Random Things tour for Gunnar Staalesen's latest, Bitter Flowers. 

Varg Veum is fresh out of rehab and his physical therapist has a job for him. Should be simple: an architect couple who are out of town need someone to stop by their house occasionally and take care of things. Basically, make it look like someone's home. 

Oh, and they have a pool. Unfortunately, there's a dead body in it. And Varg's physical therapist has gone missing. 

It's not long before the PI finds himself involved in a third case as well. A missing person's case that's eight years old. 

It quickly becomes clear that there is some connection between the three cases. But solving them all might be more difficult than Varg anticipated. 

Wow! Ok, where to start? First, I had no idea that this was a very long running series! Fortunately, starting with Bitter Flowers wasn't actually a problem. The book reads pretty much like a stand alone, with just a few character points that are clearly carried over from previous books. So it proved to be a pretty good entry into the series and the character as a whole (and it also means I have a bunch more books to add to my TBR!). 

I thought this was fantastic! It starts off very quickly with Varg arriving at the house with his PT, Lisbeth. They've known each other for a few months and have become close, but are just friends. 

Varg is a PI who's been out of commission for a few months. This particular job doesn't even require his investigating skills at all. He's basically a glorified house sitter (except he's not required to be in residence). 

Of course a body in the pool complicates things. And it's not made any better when Lisbeth runs off, leaving Varg to wait for the police himself. Fortunately, or not, he has a history with the investigating officer and isn't immediately considered a suspect of any sort. But they are a little concerned, to say the least, that Lisbeth has vanished. 

And so Varg decides to get involved. Even though the cops have clearly asked him not to. 

He can't help it. 

It's no secret that I love a great PI novel. I still haven't found anything that quite fits the gap left behind by Sue Grafton, but I have to say that Gunnar Staalesen seems like a pretty good contender! Helped in part by the fact that this book is set around the same time period as the Kinsey novels. Except they're based in Norway rather than California :)

Which is pretty cool in and of itself. I've never been to Norway and I know very little about it, especially Norway of the '80s!

And Varg is definitely the kind of character I enjoy! He's got a great sense of humor, flaunts the law (just a little), and digs his heels in whenever he's got a case!

It looks like Orenda has been publishing Staalesen's backlist in English for a bit now. I actually have the prior release Fallen Angels (which looks to be book 3 in the series) in my TBR already. I can't wait to read it and am dying to get my hands on the rest of the books in the series!

Shout out to Don Bartlett—because I really feel, as I read more and more translated books, that translators are kind of magical unicorns in the publishing business who do not get the attention they deserve! This is an excellent translation! His work, alongside Staalesen's clear talent for great plotting and character development, has made this such an easy and fun read for English-speaking audiences!

Huge thanks to Random Things Tours for including me on the tour! And equally huge thanks to Orenda for providing a copy for review! (They're one of my favorite publishers and I really do look forward to each new release with great anticipating!)