Ready to discover another great book for this 2021? Take a look…

The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl

Genre: Historical Mystery
Source: Random Things Tours
Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Orenda Books
Amazon, Hive

About The Book

Oslo, 1938. War is in the air and Europe is in turmoil. Hitler ’s Germany has occupied Austria and is threatening Czechoslovakia; civil war rages in Spain and Mussolini reigns in Italy.
When a woman turns up at the office of police-turned-private investigator Ludvig Paaske, he and his assistant – his one-time nemesis and former drug-smuggler, Jack Rivers – begin a seemingly straightforward investigation into marital infidelity.
But all is not what it seems. Soon, Jack is accused of murder, sending them on a trail which leads back to the 1920s, to prohibition-era Norway, to the smugglers, sex workers and hoodlums of his criminal past … and an extraordinary secret.

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My Thoughts

It’s not easy to make a review when a book is good and you can’t stop thinking about it! This had been a slow paced rollercoaster, with multiple characters and very interesting subplots, it was easy to lose track of time while I was reading “The Assistant”.
This book has two different time frames in Norway, not to distract the reader but to show how everything started and how it will end… (maybe?). The story is told from Jack Rivers’ perspective, the assistant of the PI Ludvig Paaske that will accept a case that will change both of their lives forever.
Jack and Paaske had a past together, but now that they are working as a team, trust is the most important thing. But the new case, a marital infidelity, is not as simple as it seems, Jack has a past connection with the wife; and when he starts hiding important information to Paaske everything will be at risk. Jack doesn’t seem to be a bad man, he is a hard worker and a good friend; but he has a weak point, a young woman she met a long time ago. But now she has reappeared to his life, with a new name and a new German husband. Their story together is truculent and it will be revealed slowly as the story passes; sadly, love and pain are always linked together.
This is a mystery, but it has so many layers and historical details that it felt difficult to only give it one label; friendship, war, spies, love, vengeance…
This is not a book to rush, everything will be revealed, you only have to let the story flow and be absorbed by it, it’s worth every page, believe me!
Are you ready to discover “The Assistant”?

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About The Author

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 eighteen novels, the most prominent of which form 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 (published in English by Orenda books in 2019). His work has been published in fourteen countries. He lives in Oslo.