Hitra, on the coast of Trøndelag: During a long series of improbably hot summer days, the nervous, young new priest finds three dead crows hanging from the church’s new altarpiece. The eyes have been removed. He summons Dorothea Krogh, the surviving wife of the old priest and the actual center of the congregation. She calls the sheriff, the mournful widower Luca Eriksen. Crows, that is, and a piece of paper with some cryptic letters. We must add that this altarpiece is something of a pain in the ass in the congregation. It is paid for by the wealthy salmon farming family Prytz, with salmon as part of the visual worship image. Whether it starts exactly there is debatable. Perhaps rather three years earlier, the day eight-year-old Jonathan disappears for all the world when he is going to ride the little piece home. He had been playing with his friend. Now he has a grave in the cemetery, but it is empty. The question of what came first, however, becomes unimportant on Saturday evening when Sheriff Luca finds a dead sixteen-year-old girl, brutally abused in an old shack on land. The girl had lived there and been killed. Serial crime Samuel Bjørk is a pseudonym for the writer and musician Frode Sander Øien. He is referred to as one of the nation’s international stars in the crime scene. For me, however, he is a new acquaintance, despite the four previous publications about the investigators Mia Krüger and Holger Munch. There are many indications that I may have missed something worth reading. “Hitra” is exactly that: well worth the trouble of reading. The detective’s return Detective Mia Krüger is already on tiny Edøya outside Hitra when the dead girl is found. She has a house there, and tends to gunshot wounds from the previous case with a stalker. She has also quit her job as an investigator, it has cost too much. Now she wants to do something else, climb and dive again. But then there is this little girl who comes calmly to ask her, who is so famous for being clever, to find Jonathan, her friend. When the dead teenage girl is also found in the boat, Holger Munch comes out to Hitra. He’s Mia’s boss who has saved her from doom more than once – and she’s a cop again. For a while anyway. Still life in the genre It is no news that the police novel has gradually become a well-used genre, often washed out to the point of boredom. “Hitra” is such a police crime. But it also shows that it is still possible to fill the formula with content that lasts. This is because Samuel Bjørk has mastered the important things, such as that the characters hold water – quite a lot. And it doesn’t just apply to the two principal investigators. Here, living people walk around and talk and think like people: the sheriff, priestess Dorothea, Jonathan’s sister, his little friend, visiting investigators from Orkanger and Trondheim. Then we haven’t forgotten self-righteous adults, nor shaky weirdos. Everyone contributes to a credible gallery. Difficult to let go of Bjørk also makes the beautiful island of Hitra, in persistent almost-too-much summer heat, shine for the reader. So does the girl at the hotel reception who confides in Holger Munch that the island outside is even more beautiful – Frøya, that is. The island and village community with its tight neighborly ties and its gossip is clearly, and sometimes cheerfully present. Then also the economic and social gap between rural people and the vulgarly wealthy salmon baron family. If all that wasn’t enough, the plot is just so fleshed out and rambling that the reader is reluctant to let go, with both abuse and youth drunkenness. The drama towards the end balances delicately against the exaggerated, but the boat carries. By the end, the more than five hundred pages have defended themselves. It has been a while since I last read a Norwegian police novel with such interest and pleasure. news reviewer Photo: Bonnier forlag Title: “Hitra” Author: Samuel Bjørk Genre: Crime Publisher: Bonnier Norsk Forlag Date: 17 March 2023
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“Hitra” by Samuel Bjørk – Reviews and recommendations
