Showing posts sorted by relevance for query No Honour. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query No Honour. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, 30 August 2021

No Honour by Awais Khan BLOG TOUR @AwaisKhanAuthor #NoHonour @OrendaBooks #Abida #BookReview

 


In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect. And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves.

When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death. Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore and then disappears.

Jamil goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape.

Moving from the depths of rural Pakistan, riddled with poverty and religious fervour, to the dangerous streets of over-populated Lahore, No Honour is a story of family, of the indomitable spirit of love in its many forms … a story of courage and resilience, when all seems lost, and the inextinguishable fire that lights one young woman’s battle for change.

No Honour by Awais Khan was published in paperback by Orenda Books on 19 August 2021. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review, as part of this Blog Tour.



Honour : a quality that combines respect, being proud, and honesty

(Definition from the Cambridge Dictionary)


I often find it difficult, as a Westerner. to criticise other cultures. Who am I to decide if something is right or wrong? What right have I to judge other cultures? I try to be open-minded when reading about things that I know little about, I try to understand tradition. 

However, I make no apologies for stating here that there is no honour at all in murder. None, whatsoever. Do not try to justify murder by telling me that the victim was dishonourable and has let down her family. Do not try to tell me that an unmarried woman, or child in many cases, is evil and lustful. Do not try to tell me that the innocent baby born out of wedlock is wicked and shameful. 

I am not the only person to think this. Many many people in Pakistan agree with me. In fact, 'honour killings (known locally in the country as karo-kari) are abhorred by many and there have been legal reforms in the country, allowing strict punishment to the perpetrators. Honour killing victims are not only females; males too are targeted. 

Awais Khan's startling and incredibly emotive story concerns the death and ill treatment of females in Pakistan and it is a book that continues to haunt me, days after finishing it. It is a story based in truth, written with honesty and passion and one that I urge everyone to read. It is not an easy read by any means, but it is so incredibly important. 

The opening scenes of No Honour are shocking, taking place in the early morning on the banks of a river in a small Pakistan village. A young girl gives birth to a child, and almost immediately afterwards she is taken from her home, along with the child and dealt with by the villagers. These are not strangers to her, these are the people that she has known since she was a baby, these are her family. It is raw and emotional and hard to read.

The two main characters in No Honour are Abida; another young teenager, and her father Jamil. Jamil differs to most men in their small village. He has his own honour, passed down to him from his mother, and his honour is true. He struggles with the expectation that as a man, he is expected to beat his wife, and demand sex. When Jamil's suspicions about his eldest, and favourite daughter Abida are proved to be true, he knows exactly what she will face. 

Whilst Abida is, in some ways, an innocent and naive teenager who has never left the small village that she grew up in, she has also inherited some of her grandmother's strengths. She is determined that she will not be another victim of the villager's idea of honour and is able to escape, along with her boyfriend to the sprawling city of Lahore. 

It is in Lahore that her worst nightmares come true and there are times when Abida wonders if it may have been better to stay at home and meet her fate. 

The city is dirty, poverty stricken and full of people who will take advantage of her and her husband. There is violence and drugs and unbearable tragedy around every corner. As Abida moves from a filthy apartment, to the faded splendour of a whore house and then to the mansion house of a drug dealer, her loyal and loving father also faces his own precarious journey. 

It is rare that I have to set down a book to take a breather. The absolute pain and utter desolation of Abida's situation became unbearable for me at times, and I had to do just that. Set it aside, gather myself together and breathe, before I could continue. 

Awais Khan's writing is masterful. He captures the small village community and then the sprawling city life so very well. It is enthralling; the sights, the sounds, the smells are described so vividly and with such authenticity, there is no doubt that this is an author who knows exactly what he is writing about. 

As we look around our world and see and hear about the terrible things that are happening throughout, it can be difficult to read about it in fiction too. However, for me, this book gave me an awareness and an insight into the whys and the hows, far more than any TV news broadcast will ever do. Whilst the subject matter is shocking, it is never exploitative, it is never done purely for the shock factor. It is sensitively and often beautifully captured.

This is a very special book. One that will stay with me forever, and one that I will re-read, for sure.

Highly recommended, and is now up there as one of my books of the year so far. 


Awais Khan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham University, and studied creative writing with Faber Academy.  

His debut novel, In the Company of Strangers, was published to much critical acclaim, and he now regularly appears on TV and radio. 

Awais also teaches a popular online creative writing course to aspiring writers around the world. 

He lives in Lahore and is currently working on his third novel. 

Follow Awais on Twitter @AwaisKhanAuthor.








Friday, 5 March 2021

*** COVER REVEAL *** #WhoIsIt @AwaisKhanAuthor #NoHonour @OrendaBooks *** COVER REVEAL ****

 


I am so THRILLED to share this cover reveal with you today! 


No Honour

by

Awais Khan


Published by Orenda Books

E Book : 19 June 2021

Paperback : 19 August 2021


A young woman defies convention in a small Pakistani village, with devastating results for her and her family. A stunning, immense beautiful novel about courage, family and the meaning of love, when everything seems lost…

 

In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect. And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves.

 

When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death. Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore and then disappears.

 

Jamal goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape.

 

Moving from the depths of rural Pakistan, riddled with poverty and religious fervour, to the dangerous streets of over-populated Lahore, No Honour is a story of family, of the indomitable spirit of love in its many forms … a story of courage and resilience, when all seems lost, and the inextinguishable fire that lights one young woman’s battle for change.







Awais Khan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham 
University. 
He has studied creative writing with Faber Academy. His debut novel, In the Company of Strangers, was published to much critical acclaim and he regularly appears on TV and Radio. 
Awais also teaches a popular online creative writing course to aspiring writers around the world. 
He is currently working on his third book. 
When not working, he has his nose buried in a book. He lives in Lahore.
Twitter @AwaisKhanAuthor




Thursday, 19 January 2023

Unlawful Killings by Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC #UnlawfulKillings @DoubledayUK @AliceLutyens #HerHonourWendyJosephQC

 


'Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally, wickedly taken away. Victims are shot or stabbed. Less often they are strangled or suffocated or beaten to death. Rarely they are poisoned, pushed off high buildings, drowned or set alight. Then there are the many who are killed by dangerous drivers, or corporate gross negligence. There are a lot of ways you can kill someone. I know because I've seen most of them at close quarters.'


High-profile murder cases all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines - for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of us, a judge doesn't get to turn the page and move on. Nor does the defendant, or the family of the victim, nor the many other people who populate the court room.

And yet, each of us has a vested interest in what happens there. And while most people have only the sketchiest idea of what happens inside a Crown Court, any one of us could end up in the witness-box or even in the dock.

With breath-taking skill and deep compassion, the author describes how cases unfold and illustrates exactly what it's like to be a murder trial judge and a witness to human good and bad. Sometimes very bad.

The fracture lines that run through our society are becoming harder and harder to ignore. From a unique vantage point, the author warns that we do so at our peril.



Unlawful Killings : Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey by Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC was published in hardback on 9 June 2022 by Doubleday, the paperback is released on 2 March 2023. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review. 

I met Her Honour Wendy Joseph at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Fiction Festival in Harrogate last year. I have never knowingly met a Judge before. I've always had that stereotypical view that a judge will be large, and loud and usually male. Her Honour is tiny and soft spoken and gentle and I was a little bit smitten by her! 

Her book is outstanding. It is one of the best non-fiction books that I've read for many years. She writes with a novelist's flair and ease about things that are real and often tragic and sad. Throughout the book, various different cases are discussed, all involving the death of at least one person. The way that she describes the court room, and the people within it is fascinating.

All too often, we hear screams from social media about the justice system, and how judges are out of touch with real life. Not so in this case, not at all. Her Honour writes with a compassion and understanding that did, I have to admit, surprise me. She may have to judge each case and what has happened, but she certainly does not judge the individuals before her. She makes a point of discussing them as the real human beings that they are, looking deeper than the defendant in the dock, and seeing the human being behind them. Learning more about their stories, and about what led them to appear before her. 

I learnt a great deal from this book, and from Her Honour. There were aspects of the law that surprised me, especially the explanation about the verdicts of guilty and not-guilty and how no one ever tried by a jury is found 'innocent', as there is no such verdict in England and Wales. A verdict of not-guilty only means that the prosecution has not made the jury sure of guilt. Even if a jury concludes the defendant is very probably guilty, they must return a verdict of 'not guilty' - because 'very probably' is not 'sure'. I have thought about this so many time since I read it. It's basic and straight forward, but I'm guessing that many people don't know this, or consider it. 

This is a fascinating, very well written book that grips like a crime fiction thriller. Highly recommended by me. 



Until March 2022 Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC was a judge at the Old Bailey, sitting on criminal
cases, trying mainly allegations of murder and other homicide. 

She read English and Law at Cambridge, was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1975, became a QC in 1998 and sat as a full-time judge from 2007 to 2022. 

When she moved to the Old Bailey in 2012 she was the only woman amongst sixteen judges, and only the third woman ever to hold a permanent position there. 

She was also a Diversity and Community Relations Judge, working to promote understanding between the judiciary and many different sectors of our community, particularly those from less privileged and minority groups. 

She mentors young people, from a variety of backgrounds, who hope for a career in law and has a special interest in helping women.





Friday, 18 August 2023

Someone Like Her by Awais Khan BLOG TOUR #SomeoneLikeHer @AwaisKhanAuthor @OrendaBooks #Pakistan #BookReview

 


Multan, Pakistan. A conservative city where an unmarried woman over the age of twenty-five is considered a curse by her family.

 Ayesha is twenty-seven. Independent and happily single, she has evaded an arranged marriage because of her family's reduced circumstances. When she catches the eye of powerful, wealthy Raza, it seems like the answer to her parents' prayers. But Ayesha is in love with someone else, and when she refuses to give up on him, Raza resorts to unthinkable revenge…

 Ayesha travels to London to rebuild her life and there she meets Kamil, an emotionally damaged man who has demons of his own. They embark on a friendship that could mean salvation for both of them, but danger stalks Ayesha in London, too. With her life thrown into turmoil, she is forced to make a decision that could change her and everyone she loves forever.

 Exquisitely written, populated by unforgettable characters and rich with poignant, powerful themes, Someone Like Her is a story of love and family, of corruption and calamity, of courage and hope … and one woman's determination to thwart convention and find peace, at whatever cost…



Someone Like Her by Awais Khan was published in paperback on 17 August 2023 by Orenda Books. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this Blog Tour.



I read and reviewed Awais Khan's last book; No Honour in August 2021.  No Honour is a book that deeply affected me, it's a book that I have never forgotten. He writes with such passion and empathy about the issues relating to (almost always) women, in Pakistan.

Someone Like Her is another book that has left a significant mark on me. It's another testament to the author's incredible skill in writing fiction firmly entrenched in reality. It is another book that for me, as a Western woman, shocked and horrified me. It is a story that evokes emotions that range from anger, to despair, to sympathy and also to hope. 

We are aware of acid attacks here in the west. They do happen, and we have various women such as Katie Piper who bravely speak out and raise awareness of this crime. However, in Pakistan, this is a far larger issue. For many people, both male and female, these attacks are seen as something that the victim may have deserved. It is incredibly difficult to change the long standing cultural beliefs of a region, and despite the many people who work in the field, to help and educate, this is still a serious issue. 

Ayesha is a twenty-seven year old woman living in Multan, Pakistan. This is a city that holds on to the conservative view that any woman aged twenty-five or other, and unmarried brings disgrace upon their family. Ayesha embraces the modern world as far as she can. Her family were once wealthy, but her father made bad decisions and they are now far lower down in society than they once were. Ayesha works for a charity that helps victims of domestic violence. She also has a lover who she adores, but whose standing in the community prevents her from marrying him, or even being open about their affair. 

When wealthy, powerful and very influential Raza Masood decides to make a donation to this charity, it is Ayesha who is sent to meet him and to accept the cheque. This is her downfall, when Raza decides he wants something, he will do everything to ensure that he gets it, and he really wants Ayesha.

What follows is a dark and at times, very disturbing account of how far Raza will go to make sure that if he cannot have Ayesha, then nobody else will too. Khan's descriptions of the city, it's people and the outright corrupt systems are all wonderfully portrayed. Ayesha flees to London where she meets Kamil, a man who has grown up in London but has firm roots in Multan. Kamil is also damaged through his past experiences and the addition of this side of domestic violence adds such depth to the story, showing that it is not only women who suffer.

Masood will never give up though and Ayesha has more trauma to endure, with abduction and rape and violence along the way. 

This is a very important book, it is a book that I feel that everyone should read, and learn from and gain some understanding about how deeply entrenched in violence this culture is. There is also a glimmer of hope as we discover those people who are working hard to stop such things happening, and running throughout it is a story of love that gradually emerges. 

Highly recommended. Another outstanding, brutal but totally honest novel from a very talented author. 




Awais Khan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham University.


He has studied creative writing with Faber Academy.

His debut novel, In the Company of Strangers, was published to much critical acclaim and he regularly appears on TV and Radio.

Awais also teaches a popular online creative writing course to aspiring writers around the world.

He is currently working on his third book.

When not working, he has his nose buried in a book.

He lives in Lahore. 

@AwaisKhanAuthor








Thursday, 20 May 2021

A Melancholy Event by Dan Glaister BLOG TOUR @danglaister @RandomTTours @unbounders #BookExtract

 


When Stephanie finds a hand-written story in a box of old papers, the path her life is to take becomes clear. Haunted by the true tale of a duel that took place 200 years ago, a ritual as tragic in its inevitability as it is in its futility, she is determined to harness its ghoulish beauty for her own ends.

A Melancholy Event is a tale of obsession, of a story that inhabits and infects the landscape, drawing the characters in this novel into its own world.




A Melancholy Event by Dan Glaister was published on 29 April 2021 by Unbound. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour, I'm delighted to share an extract from the book with you today.






An extract from A Melancholy Event by Dan Glaister




Mitzi was tired. She looked through the French windows at the patio, the loungers stranded on the paving stones, stripped of their cushions, their metal frames like skeletons. One had been blown over by the wind, its feet sticking into the air, stricken. She leaned against the glass, feeling it cold on her face, trying to expel the weariness that was consuming her. She had chosen her clothes more carefully than normal that morning, putting on a Chanel all-in-one, white with gold buttons, and had painted her nails white, marvelling at the contrast with her tanned skin. Now, watching the weather pass, listening to the slight whistling noise the wind made as it forced its way through the window frame, she felt tired again.


She caught her reflection in the glass, the white and gold of her ensemble harsh against the muted greys of the world around her. On the other side of the window the girl from school, the strange one with the cropped hair, was standing on the patio with her hand raised, staring at her.


Mitzi moved back with a start, stumbling as her leg met the arm of a chair. The girl walked towards the window and knocked on it with her fingers, her hand forming a claw, her nails tapping against the glass. Behind her, Mitzi could see a solitary magpie standing on the lawn, its mouth noiselessly opening and closing.


Stephanie tapped on the glass again. One for sorrow, Mitzi thought to herself. She looked for her sunglasses, even though it was not sunny and she was inside, but they were in the hallway. She smiled, white teeth showing, nodded to the girl, and gestured to the window, a movement she realised was redundant because the girl was already there.


She pulled the latch down and heaved on the frame, feeling its weight gather momentum as it slid to the side. The girl did not move.


“Hello, Mrs Plommer,” she said. Her voice sounded grown up, Mitzi thought, confident. “I'm sorry to bother you.”


“That's alright, I was just...” Mitzi's voice trailed off. She hadn't been sure what she was going to say, and now she felt unsettled by this girl. “It’s...”


“Stephanie,” the girl said.


“That's right, Stephanie. You came at the beginning of the summer.”


Stephanie nodded, waiting until Mitzi noticed. She gasped when she saw it.


“My god,” she said, “what have you done?”


Stephanie touched the side of her face. “It's a scar,” she said.


“Yes.” Mitzi reached out to touch it, her hand passing from inside to outside, two fingers alighting on the tip of the scar, at the point of Stephanie’s cheekbone. The girl flinched, the pain smarting, but held her head steady as the older woman ran her fingers down the red gash, tracing the trajectory of the cut, feeling the undulations and roughness on the smooth skin of the girl’s cheek.


She brought her hand back inside.


“Come in, please,” she said, arranging her features into a smile. “You will catch a cold out there.”


Stephanie lifted her feet and stepped over the rail that held the window. Mitzi leaned against the handle and it slid back into place, sealing shut with a reassuring clunk.


Stephanie looked around the room. It was like stepping into an alien world. A pair of matching white leather sofas faced each other, a low square glass table between them. At one end of the room was a brick fireplace with an angular black metal and glass stove set inside it. There was, Stephanie noted, no wood stacked up as there was in the fire at home, ash and bark scattered around the hearth.


Stephanie looked at her feet. Her trainers were muddy from the walk to Lisa's house and had left a trail leading from the plate glass of the window to the cold steel of the fireplace, small footprints marking her passage across the wooden floor and over a deep white rug, thick like a bleached meadow.


“There aren't many things,” she said.


Mitzi looked around her, at the clean lines of the furniture, at the polished surfaces, appreciating the control the room exhibited.


“No,” she said, “I don't like things.” She was feeling more like herself now, invigorated by the unexpected presence of this strange girl.


Stephanie looked at her.


“It’s a scar of honour,” she said, “a duelling scar.”


Mitzi found the girl's earnestness oddly captivating.


“You have been in a duel?”


“No,” Stephanie said. “My brother did it, in preparation for a duel. It is part of the process you go through to toughen the mind, sharpen the senses.”


It was as if she were reciting a code, her voice dispassionate. There was a tension in the silence that followed, the moment suspended. Neither Mitzi nor Stephanie spoke. Away from the window, in the centre of the room, there was no sound, no noise penetrated from outside, no birdsong, not the cackle of the magpie nor the sigh of the wind. The tiny leaves of rose bushes ballooned silently across the lawn, flustered into activity by the rising breeze, swirling in on themselves like starlings preparing to flee winter's baleful grip.


“There's something I want to show you,” Mitzi announced, and walked out of the room, Stephanie following her across the hallway with its open staircase and pale wooden floor and into the room opposite. This room was smaller, lined with books, shelves reaching from the floor up to the ceiling along one wall. Blinds were drawn across the windows, wooden slats allowing only a muted light to filter into the room.


“My husband picked them up at an antique shop, ages ago,” she said. “It's not really his sort of thing. I think he just liked the look of them. Gerald is not normally one for impulse.”


She smiled and turned to the end of the room. Stephanie followed her gaze. High on the wall in the far corner hung two long pistols, facing each other, as if primed. Stephanie walked towards them, her heart beating. Each pistol had a central part made of wood, and a handle encased in black metal, gracefully curved like the neck of a swan. A thick ring of engraved metal looped around the trigger, and above it extended a long hexagonal barrel.


Stephanie's throat was thick. She swallowed twice before speaking.


“Do they work?” she asked.


Mitzi looked at her, elements of a smile forming on her face. Stephanie thought she might be mocking her.


“I don't know,” she said. “They're supposed to work but I'm not sure when they were last fired. I suppose it could be more than a hundred years ago. I don’t know if they have ever been fired in anger.”


Stephanie was absorbed in the two pistols. She thought they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen.


“Can I have them?”


Mitzi did smile this time. Her face creased up, and Stephanie imagined all the sun cream being squeezed between the lines of Mitzi's skin, wondering if it would ooze out as her face puckered up in preparation for laughter. She swayed slightly.


“Well now,” she said, her voice deep, “for that you should really ask Geoffrey.” The day, which had promised its routine dose of perfectly manicured boredom, had become something much more interesting. She laughed, although it emerged as more of a growl than a laugh, like an animal, and looked at this curious girl, standing there, her scruffy clothes so out of place in Mitzi’s world. There was something appealing about her desperation, Mitzi thought, about the drama of the scar scything across her face.


Mitzi turned and left the room. Stephanie stared at the guns hanging on the wall, wondering if she could get them under her shirt. Before she could try Mitzi came back in, a wooden case in her hand.


“These are what they came in,” she said, placing the case on a table. “I’ll take them down.”


She pulled a sofa away from the wall and placed a chair beneath the pistols, standing on it to reach above her and take down one of the pistols. She placed it in the case and took the second pistol from the wall, the two nestled alongside each other in the case’s velvet lining.


Stephanie watched as Mitzi rearranged the furniture, positioning everything exactly as it had been, four hooks in the wall the only indication that the guns had ever been there. Mitzi stared at the space on the wall before turning back to the case. She closed the wooden lid and handed it to Stephanie.


“I don’t suppose he’ll notice,” she said, speaking to herself as much as to Stephanie. “He never comes in here anyway.”


Stephanie followed Mitzi out of the room, across the hallway, through the lounge and to the patio doors.


“You can go now,” Mitzi said, pulling the door open and standing with her hand on the latch. Stephanie nodded. She wasn’t sure what to say and decided that it would probably be better if she didn’t say anything at all. She stepped outside and Mitzi slid the window shut behind her. Stephanie raised her hand to wave but Mitzi had already turned away.


Mitzi walked across the lounge and turned on the radio. A woman’s voice wafted lazily into the room, “Is your mouth a little weak, when you open it to speak?





Dan Glaister was born and grew up in the south of England, going on to work at the Guardian as a writer, editor and foreign correspondent. 


He is captivated by the stories embedded in the landscape, by the traces they leave and how they seep into our present. 


He lives in Gloucestershire, near the setting of this, his first novel.


Twitter @danglaister








Thursday, 8 August 2024

Pursued By Death by Gunnar Staalesen BLOG TOUR #PursuedByDeath t. Don Bartlett #GunnarStaalesen @OrendaBooks #BookExtract

 


When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline ’Young Man Missing’, he realises he’s seen the youth just a few days earlier – at a crossroads in the countryside, with his two friends. It turns out that the three were on their way to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen.

 Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he’s pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.

 Is the body he’s found connected to the death of a journalist who was digging into the fish farm's operations two years earlier? And does either incident have something to do with the competition between the two powerful families that dominate Solvik’s salmon-farming industry? 

 Or are the deaths the actions of the ‘Village Beast’ – the brutal small-town justice meted out by rural communities in this part of the world. 

 Shocking, timely and full of breathtaking twists and turns, Pursued by Death reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world's greatest crime writers.



Pursued by Death by Gunnar Staalesen is published by Orenda Books on 29 August 2024 and is translated by Don Bartlett.
As part of this Blog Tour, I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you today. 



Extract from Pursued by Death by Gunnar Staalesen (translated by Don Bartlett) 



‘What the hell shall we do?’ Aga asked.

I sent him an anxious look. ‘Just report what we’ve seen. I’m
seriously worried – the van could well have been there for close
on two weeks now. We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope
there’s no one inside.’

Aga leaned over the edge and peered down into the sea.
‘Looks to me as if the driver’s door is open. What do you think?’
I leaned over as well. ‘It’s definitely not jammed shut anyway,
from what I can see.’

‘What number should we ring? 112?’

‘I’ll do it. I know the officer on this case.’

No sooner said than done. The operator on 112 noted down
where we were, who I was and promised to pass on the message
to Signe Moland or one of her colleagues. It wasn’t long before
I had her on the phone.

‘Varg? Have I understood correctly? You’ve found the vehicle
Kleiva was driving when he went missing?’

‘Yes. But it’s in the sea – and most likely has been ever since
he disappeared, I’m afraid.’

‘OK, can you see if there’s anyone inside?’

‘Impossible to see from this angle, and jumping into the water
to check isn’t exactly tempting.’

‘No, we’ll sort that out. I’ll contact the Masfjorden chief of
police, but I’m sure a few of us from Bergen will come, too. Will
you be there?’

‘I’m in no great rush, so if you need me to stick around …
‘We’ll have to talk to you anyway. Are you alone?’

‘No, there’s someone with me. A guy who has a cabin here.
We discovered the camper van together.’

‘Good. Stay there until we arrive.’

I glanced at Aga. ‘Looks like we’ll have to stay here a while.’

He nodded by way of response, and I confirmed to Signe
Moland that we would be here, both of us.

After I had rung off, there was something of a strange atmosphere. It was as though the camper van below was drawing us
down, and we both automatically took a few steps back along
the pier. Neither of us said anything for a while. It was a bit like
Edvard Aga and I had both applied for the same job and now we
had met each other in the waiting room before our interviews.
In the end, he gestured towards the fjord. ‘Was … Jonas
Kleiva driving the van?’

‘It’s registered in his name, at least. He’s been missing for
almost two weeks, since they were here for the demonstration.’

He looked at me, downcast, then he nodded vaguely, almost
imperceptibly. ‘Hm.’


One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway, in
1947. 
He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. 
He is the author of over twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. 
Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour). 
Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted for the award in 2019. 
He lives with his wife in Bergen.