Not everything was going to be Jo nesbo in the new Norwegian noir novel… Today we start with a Jorn Lier Horst who began his literary career shortly after Nesbo, but who can now sit at his table. Furthermore, there are many more thematic symmetries between the two. Because, in addition to sharing noir as a narrative inertia for so many Scandinavian writers, both Nesbo and Lier Horst have also devoted themselves to more children's and youth literature. And the fact is that in diversity lies the taste and commitment of each person to explore all types of reading markets.
Here we focus on that darker side of the noir genre where Lier Horst has made William Wisting captain general of his plots. Few current series as extensive as the one focused on the investigative future of a Wisting that points to twenty novels as the near horizon. So, as you can imagine the thousand and one in which this unparalleled character is seen.
If we add to this the fact that everything started as a literary translation of a real case, the matter takes on another dimension. And if we also add the fact that Lier Horst lends his voice and his knowledge of him as a police chief to his essential protagonist, William Wisting, the thing points to more than an alter ego. No one better than Lier Horst to delve into so many investigations through the most remote crime scenes, where the essences of evil are uncovered in a thousand ways. At the moment in Spanish some parts of the entire series are being recovered and we must take advantage of it...
Top 3 Recommended Jorn Lier Horst Novels
closed in winter
Southern Norway is enjoying a few months off from the rigors of winter. Between bucolic Bergen and Larvik where William Wisting lives, everything can even evoke a Venice moved to other latitudes. But winter always returns and the scenery changes completely. From that setback, which starts from the natural climatology, this plot awakens into a disturbing paradox where nature seems to hover like a dark scenario of bad omens. And it is that beyond the criminal aspect of the story, some sinister telluric forces further constrain the narrative.
The summer cabins on the southern coast of Norway begin to close when September arrives. Their owners lock doors and windows before the arrival of the cold. However, the body of a man appears in one of them. William Wisting leads an investigation group that must face several questions: more bodies are emerging in the fjord and perhaps everything is a settling of scores between drug traffickers. However, following the trail of money branches the case to touch the bowels of European organized crime, from Denmark to Lithuania. The situation becomes completely amazing when the birds of the region begin to die en masse and to plummet.
Hunting dogs
William Wisting's years of practice go a long way. Both to create multiple enemies and to stir up a sense of strange confusion. No one is always right in his performance. Except that when one is a judge, a doctor or a police officer, the rulings can involve loads of unsuspected importance. Could it be that Wisting was not infallible or perhaps his memory is not enough to discover nuances that could point to an ambush...
Seventeen years ago, William Wisting investigated one of the most talked about cases in Norway, that of the kidnapping and murder of the young Cecilia Linde. But recently evidence has come to light that the evidence was tampered with and an innocent man was thrown in jail.
Did Wisting run after the trail of the first prey that appeared without considering other options? The point is that now they have suspended, until further notice, the most irreproachable of the country's commissioners. Seventeen years later, the media smell blood again. Wisting must work behind the scenes to understand what really happened and why the wrong leads were followed. He alone has the help of Line, his journalist's daughter.
the usurper
Viggo Hansen, William Wisting's own neighbor, spends months in front of his television, until he becomes a mummy reduced to its minimum expression. This unfortunate event makes Line, William's daughter and a journalist for more INRI, feel a bit of guilt because the girl decides to approach the matter as a report and, of course, turns to her father to gather more information about this person abandoned to his fate after a natural death and a worrying silence in its abandonment...
Her father gathers information for her while dealing with a crime. He is about a murdered man discovered in a fir forest and hidden there for several months. The scientific police manage to isolate the fingerprints that lead to the trail of a serial killer of young women, wanted for years by the FBI, a university professor who became famous there for murdering hitchhikers on interstate highways.
He has been mysteriously missing for years, shortly after his identity was discovered. The US agency sends two special agents to help the Larvik police hunt him down, which frankly doesn't please Wisting and his team, who like to snoop around at will. Especially since Americans are not quick to communicate information and send the results of various tests.
During this time, Line questions the neighborhood, asking for the memories of the elders who may have known Viggo, a shy, discreet, almost mute being, who did not appear much when he was in school or as a child. Little by little, the profile of the poor man abandoned in the living room of his house becomes clearer, the journalist even begins to suspect that the circumstances of his death are not so obvious. Two narrative knots to complete a multi-stage and magnetic plot.
