This is the first one I've read. Stood alone just fine. I enjoyed it sufficiently to look for others in the series.

I had read two previous Staalesen efforts and this was the best of the three, to me. It is narrated by Varg Veum, always a risk in mystery writing since you know that the narrator has to live through any scrape in order to tell the story unless the author is a cheap trickster. Veum is a hero open to getting bruised, attacked, losing fights and starting few but one who does not shrink from the physical demands of being a PI. He has friends who are foes in the police department, as is usual in suc...

I have a suspicion that my issues with this book are more to do with the translation than anything else. The plot is great with plenty of unexpected twists and turns, but some of the images feel flat and similes are lackluster. Translation?

This instalment of the Varg Veum series had a plot that was too complicated. Also, it was a slow read due to too many unneeded descriptions and hackneyed phrases. I had to stop reading it several times. Not as good as most of the books in this series.

The Writing on the Wall is a compelling Scandinavian crime novel taking place in Bergen, Norway, dealing with murder, corruption and men if privilege. The hero, Varg Veum, a former social worker turned private detective is portrayed as somewhat of an outcast. In fact, the expression varg i veum, in Norwegian means persona non grata, outlaw or pariah. The police often treat him this way, but it's never fully explained why. However this is the 11th book in the series, and while it reads pretty eas...

I only bought this because it was on Amazon's 99p daily deal offer. I suspect I wouldn't have paid a full £1 for it, however it was far preferable to most of the turgid pot-boilers that count as contemporary 'thrillers'. This tale certainly cements the notion (cf. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc) that those Scandinavians are a bunch of dirty underage-prostitute-murdering thugs - which is nice. Unlike the unfortunately prolix aforementioned Girl with Dragon Tattoo, this was at least a quick read,...

Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum is a true original. His name can mean "lone wolf", "persona non grata" and other negative labels, and Varg manages to live up to all of them. His background as a sociologist working in child services (before he went postal on a child abuser) tends to attract him to cases involving children, and this is no exception. Varg is hired by a mother whose teenage girl Torild has disappeared. As Varg digs deeper, he finds that Torild was embroiled with some very unsavoury cha...

As others have mentioned, the edition of this novel suffers from an awkward translation which is clearly Brit-based (windcheater vs windbreaker). And as like other reviewers, I discovered this author and his series through the MHZ network presentation of the Varg Veum movies (which are mostly decent - the movie based on this book is quite different).The main character and the eventually unwinding of the plot brought the rating to three stars. The bizarre story-line about Varg receiving his own f...

This was too slow and dreary for me.

I'm really enjoying playing catch up in the world of Varg Veum. He's is such an interesting character, not entirely what you might be expecting from a Private Investigator and certainly not in the Raymond Chandler style that most people would probably envisage. He's a guy with a real heart, a soft spot for the more personal and sensitive cases, not interested in chasing a quick buck with an infidelity case, but happy to go on the hunt for a missing person, especially if that person is vulnerable...

In truth this book took me far longer to read than I expected. Was it because I was not fully engaged? I'm not sure. I have to say I was not fully convinced by Hal Sutcliffe's translation into English. I found it far too anglicised for my taste. Were there really mentions of Inspector Morse in the original? Possibly, but much of the book was full of English expressions that seemed to diminish the Norwegian feel of the characters. I enjoyed it to a certain extent, but not as much as I'd hoped.

This is the first varg veum book that I wasn’t crazy for. I usually like his self hating doubt filled musings, as well as his clever observations about humanity in general This had less of that and entirely too much action which didn’t allow any time for his understanding of events to be shared. I was disappointed but not giving up.

I liked the book, especially Veum and his wry sense of humor. Enjoyed his depiction of the city of Bergen which was like a minor character in the book. My library only has one other of Staalesen's books but I'll read it too.

As usual Veum is a pearl! 👍🏼

Another gripping Scandinavian Crime novel, soon to be forgotten. My guilty pleasure!

I came to this series from seeing the Norwegian television series based on the books. Prior to that, I had never heard of Staalesen or his detective Varg Veum. More than any of the other Scandanavian mysteries, this one has its roots firmly in the private eye tradtion of Hammett, Chandler, and Ross MacDonald. In fact, the book reminded very much of the Lew Archer novels. I started off really enjoying the book, but as it continued, it seemed to go on and on, and while it did pick back up at the e...

Haunting

Originally published in Norway in 1995, Gunnar Staalesen's The Writing on The Wall is set in Bergen Norway in the early '90s. Private Eye Varg Veum returns from the funeral of his ex-wife's most recent husband to find the distressed mother of missing 16 year old girl Torild waiting to see him. Around the same time Bergen is buzzing with rumours about the death of Judge Brandt after he is found dead in a hotel room wearing flimsy female underwear. Veum starts digging into the last known sightings...

A combination of poor translation, community college creative writing class techniques, moralizing, pitifully weak female characters and over-convulted plotting made this a hard book to get through. But, I did want to make it to the end, hence I gave it two stars. I usually give one star to books I could barely finish or I started to skim after awhile. If I could have given it 1.5, I would have. I'm not doing too well with Scandinavian crime fiction, though Henning Mankell is significantly bette...

I don't know why I read this book to the end. Perhaps it was so I could play spot the mistake, or wonder which creative writing course the author took (he used all the tips for writing a punchy line). Or maybe it was so I could just say, I read it and I won't be reading another one. This was dull, predictable, and the descriptions read like a child's comprehension exercise.