Customer Reviews

The Last Fix

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Last Fix" by K.O. Dahl joins the growing inventory of Scandinavian mystery books that are now being translated into English and distributed in the U.S. and other anglophone countries. The best of these crime novels have intricate plots, but also, unusually good character development. While I wouldn't rate "The Last Fix" at the top of the list in this sub-genre (this isn't Nesbo, Larrsen, Mankell, Fossum, etc.), it was ultimately a decent read, and I would definitely give author Dahl another look.

"The Last Fix" is centered on the murder of an attractive young woman, who is recovering from drug addiction and a traumatic childhood. Her last hours are carefully documented in the narrative run up to what will turn out to be her violent death. The rest of the book is spent on a Rashomon-like re-telling of the events prior and after the murder, as well as a detailed description of the young woman's life, including her various dubious relationships. The rehash of the crime and eventual resolution are produced through a very long police procedural by the two Oslo cops assigned to the case, Frolich and Gunnarstranda. The conclusion is relatively satisfying, but as the person(s) responsible for the crime had relatively little character or psychological workup before the final pages, the author strains a bit to provide credible motive (in my opinion.)

The main problem I had with this novel was what seemed like a kind of mushiness in the narrative and slightly off-center dialogues between the characters. The translation into English was done by a Brit who took no pains to avoid UK-slang in order to make the language more accessible to other anglophones. Overall, the book could have used some sharpening from a more astute editor and some compromises on the English translation.

I find it incredible that this only has one review so far and that so many are giving that one review negative votes.This is actually more of a police procedural than it is noir...the final portion of the book is what gives it more of a noir feel.A recovering addict is apparantly raped and killed after she's been attacked at the travel agency where she's employed and after she's been sick at a party held by her rehab center, a party she didn't really wish to attend but felt obligated to. The resulting police investigation reveals a past involving several men who become suspects and a connection to a twenty year old cold case. Scandinavian crime novels have an unique flavor to them, and this is easily one of the best comparable to the work of those like Fossum and Nesbo.

K. O. Dahl (Kjell Ola Dahl), a prize-winning author in Norway, has just had this third novel published in the U.S., though it was the first of the three books to be published in the series in Norway. Written in 2000, it features pudgy Detective Frank Frolich and his boss, the taciturn Chief Inspector Gunnarstranda. Here Dahl focuses more on the victims and those who surround them than he does on his sleuths, not even giving physical descriptions of his detectives till many pages into the book. This helps create a suspenseful and often dramatic novel which sometimes devolves into philosophical, social, and psychological discussions as his characters meet and interact.

The novel starts simply, then ratchets up quickly when a thug enters a travel agency and physically threatens Katrine, a young employee with a past. That night Katrine, has to attend to a party with her skinhead boyfriend, and she does not want to attend. She has nearly completed three years of a drug rehab program, run by the party's hostess, Annabeth, and her husband, but when she arrives, she discovers that her insensitive host and hostess and the party guests are consuming large quantities of alcohol, and smoking and imbibing in recreational drugs. The author increases the tension by describing the party through Katrine's point of view, revealing her terrified reaction to a sudden fainting attack. She has refused all "substances," and when many of the guests, including her date, leave to attend a nightclub at midnight, she calls a friend for a ride home instead. The next morning her body, cast off from a bridge, is found beside a lake.

Though some elements of the mystical appear in Part I as Katrine and her friend share a story about a ring, which becomes symbolic later in the novel, that narrative is straightforward. Most of Part II is less a narrative than a series of dialogues, as Inspector Gunnarstranda and Det. Frolich begin interviewing everyone who might have had contact with Katrine, leaving it up to the reader to process all the disparate elements they are investigating. Virtually all the characters have something to hide, often having to do with their sexual escapades, and all of them lie. The mysteries of Katrine's life involving her real parents, her foster parents, her sad inability to find true mentors, and her search for peace through drugs and sex, become the major focus of the rest of the book.

The two detectives, Gunnarstranda and Frolich remain thinly developed, overall, but the reader develops significant empathy for Katrine, the victim, whose grim life, as it unfolds through the investigation, is well developed on a psychological level. As the detectives investigate, their interviews with people who knew Katrine lead to a reliance on dialogue to reveal the action. This creates a novel that "tells about" more than it "shows," and that, in turn, limits the excitement and the reader's involvement. The ending comes as a big surprise, but that surprise stretches the limits of plausibility, at least for me. Though I enjoyed this book, I was hoping for that "ah-ha!" moment in which the reader suddenly sees how many clues s/he ignored as the novel progressed, and I missed that here. Mary Whipple

I read one other book by this author, Man in the Window. It may have been because I liked the first one far better (rated it highly), that this one didn't appeal as much. Other reviewers detailed the specifics of this story very well. No need for still another one.

I found the first part of the book a bit difficult to get into but that may well have been an attention span issue at my end. However, some of the events per the behavior of the main female character and others surrounding her were a bit "wanting". Because drugs were involved extensively in this story, that may have been the reason (thus "anything goes") or it may have been a way for the author to justify some of the events of the book, in other words to "set up" the situations. It had a bit of that latter feel

I don't care for the "mystical" in any story and found the circumstances with the ring as noted in other reviews also something I would have preferred to have been omitted.

Net-net I thought it was worth having read the book but I liked "Man in the Window" a great deal more. Would I try another book by K.O. Dahl? Yes. If the third left me with same "it was OK" sense, then not another.

Norway delivers another impressive writer, Dahl a welcome addition to a growing number who address the universality of criminal behavior. Set primarily in a recovery community in Oslo, a young woman near graduation from the facility is found murdered, the unfortunate victim's colorful past threatening to expose past and present relationships. As dour police inspector Gunnarstranda and his opinionated detective, Frank Frolich, investigate the circumstances of Katrine Bratterud's death, there is no shortage of motives or perpetrators, from Katrine's current boyfriend to an occasional lover, a violent criminal from the past, even the director of the rehab facility, Annabeth As and her husband, Bjorn Gerhardsen, who has purchased Katrine's favors in her pre-sobriety days as a streetwalker. About to enter the world unhampered by addictions, Katrine is excited, on the cusp of discovery, fully conscious of her appeal to the opposite sex. A troubled, drug-riddled youth put behind her, Katrine is high on life and the immediate future, a woman other females envy and men admire, both openly and covertly.

Frolich and Gunnarstranda are a sweet and salty combination, men who intuit each other's direction in investigations, subtly manipulating interviews. Dahl adds literary flavor to an essentially police procedural through the pithy observations of his characters and the complexities of their lives, for instance the philosophical bent of Katrine's sometimes-lover, Henning: "Language and poetry are our way of sensing the incomprehensible." Indeed, part of this novel's pleasure is its detail and provocative perspective, a consideration of more than fact, but human experience and hidden motivations. The result is a crime story, but also a broader treatment of a culture and the changes wrought by time. Addiction and its detritus are the fallout of modern society, but the particularities of place enhance this tale of murder and deception. Certainly the unique combination of Gunnarstranda and Frolich establishes this pair as a team to savor in other Dahl mysteries. Crime is ubiquitous and predictable, but this author has a unique and interesting voice. Luan Gaines/2011.

Well, actually this is the 3rd Dahl I've read. Once you find a new author who writes well and has intriguing stories, it's easy to get hooked. Over the last few years I've discovered and recommended quite a few Scandinavians to all friends who are devotees of really good mysteries. As it turns out, just knowing the author is Scandinavian is enough. Have had a rare disappointment.