I received a copy of this book from the publisher in return for an honest review.
About The Book
Oslo detective Frølich searches for the mysterious sister of a young female asylum seeker, but when people start to die, everything points to an old case and a series of events that someone will do anything to hide…
Suspended from duty, Detective Frølich is working as a private investigator, when his girlfriend’s colleague asks for his help with a female asylum seeker, who the authorities are about to deport. She claims to have a sister in Norway, and fears that returning to her home country will mean instant death.
Frølich quickly discovers the whereabouts of the young woman’s sister, but things become increasingly complex when she denies having a sibling, and Frølich is threatened off the case by the police. As the body count rises, it becomes clear that the answers lie in an old investigation, and the mysterious sister, who is now on the run…
A dark, chilling and up-to-the-minute Nordic Noir thriller, Sister is also a tense and well-plotted murder mystery with a moving tragedy at its heart, cementing Kjell Ola Dahl as one of the greatest crime writers of our generation.
My Review
Sister, the latest in the Oslo Detectives series of books by Norwegian writer Kjell Ola Dahl and features Detective Frank Frølich. He has left the police force and is now a private detective, investigating such things as employees stealing from their workplace and is scraping a living together. When he meets a woman and falls into a relationship with her, she introduces him to a woman, Aisha who is looking for her sister.
Aisha is seeking asylum in Norway after fleeing Iraq. She is being held in a detention centre and finding her sister, Sheyma who left Iraq in 2005, is urgent as Aisha is facing deportation. The thing is, her sister hasn’t been heard of for quite some time and Frølich suspects that it may be like lookinhg for a needle in a haystack.
Frølich is a dedicated and thorough detective who takes his job seriously. Almost too seriously at times, allowing it to overshadow his personal life on occasion. His hunt for the missing sister takes him down some dark avenues to the underbelly of immigration and to a potential police cover up of a national disaster.
This is less a crime novel and more an examination of society. I found the plight of the refugees and the way they are carelessly treated by the system upsetting to read. Deportation means returning to a country filled with danger and violence but as Kjell Ola Dahl examines, remaining in Oslo may not be a safe option either.
Frølich is concerned that Sheyma, a young Iraqi woman travelling alone, has faced harm in Norway and that finding her may be nigh on impossible. When he finds a potential lead it appears that he may have found Sheyma, but it seems that she doesn’t want to be found and he has uncovered a hornets nest of deception. What starts off as a book about the hunt for a missing woman develops into possible corruption at the heart of the justice system.
For Frølich, who has the word justice running in his veins, this is like a red rag to a bull. He is already butting heads with his previous bosses and colleagues in the police, and when he is first on the scene at a possible murder, he is brought deeper into a web of lies and deceit.
This multi-layered and emotionally complex novel is a war cry against the ills of society. Frølich stands for all that is good in the world (even if he does questionable things) and is on a one man mission to right the wrongs. The sparse narrative adds to the pervading darkness of a system which is broken and corrupt and sent chills down my spine. Ably translated by Don Bartlett, this is a timely read about the world we live in and provides food for thought.
About The Author
Kjell Ola Dahl
One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Kjell Ola Dahl was born in 1958 in Gjøvik. He made his debut in 1993, and has since published eleven
novels, the most prominent of which is a series of police procedurals cum
psychological thrillers featuring investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix and he won both the prestigious Brage and Riverton Prizes for The Courier in 2015. His work has been published in 14 countries, and he lives in Oslo.
Where You Can Buy It
My thanks to Karen Sullivan at Orenda Books for a copy of the book and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for an invitation to join the Blog Tour.
Sister by Kjell Ola Dahl is out now in ebook and out on the 30th April in paperback.
Beverley Has Read 
Thanks so much for the blog tour support BEv xx
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