Saturday, April 20, 2019

#20: Big Sister by Gunnar Staalesen

A private eye gets a job hunting a missing woman from a half-sister he never met in Big Sister by Gunnar Staalesen.  Soon our aging but determined PI is mixed up with a motorcycle gang and a long-buried sexual assault amidst a myriad of other crimes.

Staalesen is riffing on Raymond Chandler, from the title (cribbed from The Little Sister) on through to his terse style and murky family dynamics. 

I enjoyed this thoroughly and was deeply surprised to find out this story was some twenty novels in, and that Staalesen and his protagonist are huge in Norway, having also spawned a dozen or more movies and a commemorative statue (seen in a photo at the beginning of this book!).   I would definitely say more of Stallesen's writings need to be translated into English as only a few seem available. 

Recommended for crime fans.  I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.

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