Today I’m pleased to be starting the blog tour for Fallen Angels. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

When Bergen PI Varg Veum finds himself at the funeral of a former classmate on a sleet-grey December afternoon, he s unexpectedly reunited with his old friend Jakob guitarist of the once-famous 1960s rock band The Harpers and his estranged wife, Rebecca, Veum’s first love.

Their rekindled friendship is thrown into jeopardy by the discovery of a horrific murder, and Veum is forced to dig deep into his own adolescence and his darkest memories, to find a motive and a killer.

Tense, vivid and deeply unsettling, Fallen Angels is the spellbinding, award-winning thriller that secured Gunnar Staalesen’s reputation as one of the world s foremost crime writers.

Review:

I must admit that I’ve not read this series from the beginning, so I loved that Fallen Angels took us back to Varg Veum’s childhood to give us an idea of his history and what makes him tick. The character development, not just for Veum, but for all of the characters involved in the investigation, is brilliant and I became engaged with the investigation straight away, keen to know what had happened and how each character was connected to it. 

Fallen Angels is set is Norway and the scenery is beautiful. I loved the descriptions and the landscape only adds to the atmosphere of the novel. 

There are several themes in Fallen Angels that underpin the investigation, and these gave me lots to think about alongside the main plot. Some of the issues that Staalesen raises could be uncomfortable for some readers, but they are handled with a sensitivity that I really admired and appreciated.

Fallen Angels is something of a slow burner, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel at all. The ending, in particular, is very tense and there are several twists that I wasn’t able to guess.

Fallen Angels is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: