| Publisher | Orenda Books |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 20 June 2018 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1912374199 |
| Format | paperback |
| Pages | 271 |
| Price | £ 8.99 |
Big Sister
by
Bergen’s PI Varg Veum is approached by a woman who introduces herself as his older half-sister and who wants him to find her missing goddaughter. The search for 19-year-old Emma takes Veum on a personal journey into the past.
Review
Varg Veum, Bergen’s most famous private investigator, always takes on impossible cases, usually at great personal and financial cost. As a former social worker he simply cannot ignore cries for help, especially when children or young people are involved. But when on a cold November day he receives a visitor who introduces herself as his half-sister, he has no idea how painful this investigation will turn out to be.
Varg is aware of Norma Johanne Bakkevikk’s existence, but he had never met her before. Norma wants to establish some connection and talk about her own past and family matters. But her main reason for approaching Veum is to ask him to search for her goddaughter Emma Hagland who had vanished without a trace three weeks earlier. The police aren’t interested in her disappearance. Emma, a 19-year-old trainee nurse in Bergen, had moved from Haugesund and cut contact with her mother Ingeborg. She didn’t leave an address, and stopped answering the phone.
Very slowly a terrible story emerges, going back to 1975 when a schoolgirl was viciously raped, leaving her completely catatonic. Then everything pointed at Robert, only 15 at the time. He was accused of this horrendous assault, but as the case never was investigated by the police, he chose to escape from the place, the accusations and start a new life away from suspicions in a small religious community.
When Ingeborg found about his past, she threw him out of the house and Emma’s life. Neither she nor Norma can see any connection between ‘this old business’ and Emma. But Veum digs deep and discovers that Emma found her father also living in Bergen with a new family – and was rejected. This must have been a terrible blow to her.
As always, Varg Veum is determined to complete the job, to find the girl. Also, he is motivated by the curiosity to learn more about his own family as snippets of information from the past keep shattering vague memories of his own childhood. Varg reminisces about his father, tram conductor Andreas Veum, fascinated about Norse mythology, but not interested in his son, and mother Ingrid, quiet and distant. He follows a trail leading to a jazz quintet from the interwar years called the Hurrycanes, and to questioning his own history.
Dry humour and stoicism usually save Veum from the most dramatic and life-threatening situations, yet here it seems that his luck might run out as he faces an extreme biker gang, a dangerous internet cult and his own feelings of displacement.
Reviewed 08 December 2018 by Ewa Sherman
