As he did with THE SATELLITE PEOPLE Lahlum has explored a theory about the cause of homicide, i.e. that often a first killing sets off a chain reaction, and is the catalyst for further killings.

The real brains behind investigator K2 is without doubt his young assistant Patricia. She prompts him with questions to ask, lines of enquiry to take, and people to investigate. However the end result of this is that often the reader is also playing catch up, and we do not have the full facts, so it is very hard for us to solve any of the mysteries. I eventually found this quite frustrating. It is a method which involves K2 chasing a number of red herrings, often at great length, only to find that track is a dead end. Patricia meanwhile sits smugly in her wheel chair waiting for K2 to come to the right conclusion.

It is obviously a carefully plotted novel, and the political setting in 1970 would mean a lot more to Norwegian readers. ( )

For the third instalment of what has become a favourite historical crime series for me we move out of the 60’s and into 1970. The book opens with one of the series’ heroes, Inspector Kolbjørn Kristiansen or K2 as he’s referred to by the press, sitting on a train and witnessing a young woman outside behaving erratically and seeming to be in great fear. The woman attempts to catch the train and even motions to K2 that he should pull the emergency cord after the doors close before she can board. He doesn’t, not realising what she wants until it’s too late, and a few hours later he is called to the scene of the woman’s murder. She is soon identified as Marie Morgenstierne, the young woman who was the fiancée of Falko Reinhardt, a charismatic political activist who disappeared two years earlier.

Fortunately for K2 he is once again able to call on the crime solving assistance of Patricia Borchmann. She is the daughter of an old family friend and her logic and intelligence has helped K2 solve two previous cases (or if we’re being scrupulously honest we should admit she’s done most of the solving all on her own). Patricia is in a wheelchair and chooses not to leave her home but none of that stops her from thinking things through and directing K2’s questioning of suspects and evidence collection. The series titles all relate to the type of crime Patricia sees at the heart of the story and here she feels that the killing of Marie Morgenstierne is the kind of crime that sets of a chain reaction of sorts. Events, including further killings, that might never have taken place but for the original murder. This is just one aspect of the unique perspective Patricia brings to crime solving and the series.

Another thing I thoroughly enjoy about this series is its exploration of Norwegian history. As with the previous two books there are aspects of the story that hark back to WWII but there is a lot of fascinating contemporary detail as well. Marie’s circle of activist friends are key to this element of the novel. Her missing fiancé was leader of a radical communist group which is attempting to carry on its work despite the loss of their leader. The young people’s activism is contrasted with that of a network of older men who had been convicted of being involved with the Nazis during the war and thought, perhaps, to still be active on the right-wing side of politics. Might they really be planning some kind of attack on a prominent political figure? And if so can K2 and Patricia prevent it from taking place?

The suspect pool for Marie’s murder is pretty wide. After Marie’s death there are three members of Falko Reinhardt’s group left for K2 to investigate and he must also look to former member, Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen, who chose to move to a less radical group some time after the leader’s disappearance. There are also several former Nazis whose current activities he needs to dig into and possibly even Falko Reinhard’s parents who are still struggling with the disappearance of their much-adored only child. Even Marie’s father is a potential suspect, having been estranged from his daughter largely due to their wildly opposite political leanings. This all makes for a fascinating and complex story and a difficult crime for Patricia and K2 to solve. Even the resolution here is complicated, though it is satisfying.

There’s some interesting developments in the personal lives of the main characters here too. K2 is glad that Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen proves never to be too high up the list of suspects because he becomes somewhat smitten by her. In a way this fact forms a wedge between K2 and Patricia (though not in the obvious way) and in turn provides one of the most dramatic and heart-breaking moments of the book. I always know I’m getting a bit too invested in fictional people when I start preparing to give one of them a bollocking for some aspect of their behaviour. But I really do like both these main characters and I want them to continue to solve crimes for my enjoyment (it is all about me right?) so I don’t want them being unpleasant to each other. I note though that there is another book in the series already published overseas so I’ll just have to hope that things are patched up already.

Before I wind up I must make particular mention of the translation here. It is so easy to become blasé about having access to such great books thanks to the work of largely unsung contributors. Most people, myself included, tend only to think of the translator when the writing doesn’t read naturally or feels clunky in some way but that is never the case with this series. I was particularly struck this time by the inclusion of several colloquialisms that are perfectly natural in English, describing someone as “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” for example, and couldn’t help wondering if this was an actual translation or whether in the original language a totally different derogatory phrase for calling into question someone’s intelligence was used. And if so how did Kari Dickson (this novel’s translator) choose that particular phrase? I guess I’ll never know but it fitted so perfectly in context, along with the thousands of other choices I’m sure she had to make, and as I am woefully monolingual I am eternally grateful for her efforts.

THE CATALYST KILLING might be my favourite book of this series so far (and I really liked THE HUMAN FLIES and SATELLITE PEOPLE). Along with the well-plotted classic whodunit there is the intriguing look at life in 1970’s Norway, a slew of interesting characters and more than one heart-pounding moment. Although it does have some humourous moments this book isn’t as light as its predecessors. It’s still a long way from the noir-ish end of the genre spectrum but the tensions and heartbreaks of many of the key players give this novel a more sombre tone. Ok there were tears. But I loved it anyway.

1970. Inspector Kolbjorn Kristiansen, known as K2, witnesses a young woman desperately trying to board a train only to have the doors close before her face. The next time he sees her, she is dead ...As K2 investigates, with the help of his precocious young assistant Patricia, he discovers that the story behind Marie Morgenstierne's murder really began two years ago, when a group of politically active young people set out on a walking tour in the mountains. There, one night, the party's charismatic leader - and Marie's boyfriend - Falko Reinhardt vanished without a trace. But were the relationships between this group of friends and comrades all they appeared to be? What did Marie see, that made her run for her life that day? And could both mysteries be linked to Falko's research into a cell of Norwegian Nazis he suspected may still be active? It soon becomes clear that Marie's death is not only a complex case in its own right, but will act as a catalyst in a dark set of events which will leave K2 and Patricia confronting their most dangerous and explosive investigation yet. And as the pair work hard to unravel the clues before Marie's killer can strike again, the detective fails to notice that his young assistant has her own problems to face ...

This is book 3 in a series featuring Detective Inspector Kolbjorn Kristiansen from Oslo and his young assistant Patricia. Patricia is a wheelchair-bound young woman who is extremely smart and obsessed with mysteries. K2 is the narrator of these stories, which puts him in the Watson role while Patricia is the brilliant amateur sleuth. Or perhaps their relationship is more similar to that of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, where the detective never leaves his home and his assistant does all the legwork. Goodwin however is a much wittier and sharper character than K2. The latter is a man of mediocre intelligence who relies heavily on Patricia, who has already helped him twice in the past, significantly furthering his career.

I really enjoyed the first one in the series, “The Human Flies”, but was a bit underwhelmed by the sequel, “Satellite People”. So, was “The Catalyst Killing” another drop in quality or a return to form? Well, sort of both. While the plot here is more engaging, with the detectives having to figure out how a man could disappear from a cabin in the woods in the middle of the night while he was surrounded by his friends, without leaving any witnesses, the solution to this turns out to be disappointingly mundane. The plot has many layers, but the culprit is relatively obvious from the beginning. Also some of the later story-developments didn’t ring true, especially the final twist requiring too much suspension of disbelief.

One of the criticisms I have seen levelled at this series is, that there is little character-development. And indeed K2 doesn’t seem to have become any smarter. I found it almost unintentionally comical, how K2 had to run to Patricia every time a problem arose, for example inquiring per phone what questions to ask a certain witness, making him seem annoyingly dim-witted. His partner Patricia after three books still remains something of a cypher. We know that she is extremely intelligent, but that’s about it. What does she feel, what does she want, what is going on inside her head?



In his afterword the author mentions, that he intended this this book to be an homage to the works of Ross Macdonald, who in his books turned the crime story into a Greek tragedy, dealing with dark family secrets and devastating personal traumas. However I would never have noticed this, since not only is Lahlum’s writing very different from Macdonald’s (Macdonald among other things was a great prose stylist while Lahlum uses a very simple, dry language), the characters also seem superficial compared to those in the works of the great American.

While I appreciate, that Hans Olav Lahlum is trying to combine the social commentary of Scandinavian crime fiction with the more complex puzzle plots of classic detective stories, I am not sure I will be following this series any further in the future. ( )