Yours Until Death is the first of the Varg Veum books translated into English although, oddly, not the first in the series. Based in Bergen in Norway, Varg is a dissolute small-time private investigator, and was formerly a Child Welfare officer.

The book opens with a young child walking into Varg's office seeking help recovering his bike from some vicious bullies. Varg agrees to help, and gradually starts to get involved with the boy and his recently-separated mother. After the mother asks Varg to talk to her ex-husband about child support, he sees him go into her flat where he is soon found dead, and she is found holding the murder weapon.

Despite appearances, Veum refuses to believe that she can have done this and offers to help the defense investigation.

The book is quite good without being highly original or surprising. Veum has a nice line in wisecracks but the character is not as memorable as Martin Beck or Kurt Wallander, for example. Staalesen gives him some depth by harking back to Veum's own unhappy childhood, but he doesn't do much with that, at least not yet. The book's real strength is Staalesen's prosaic descriptions of Bergen and its surrounds. One passage where he describes the sudden onset of Spring is excellent, as is the brooding presence he gives the mountain that glowers over this ancient city. ( )

Varg Veum (whose first name means "lone wolf") is a not so successful private detective with a background in social welfare in 1970s Bergen, Norway. He starts out this story with idealistic views and a lived-in face; by the end, both have taken a severe beating.
One day an eight-year-old boy named Roar comes to his office and hires Veum to find his bicycle which has been stolen by a local gang of teenage thugs. Roar lives alone with his mother but he doesn't want her to try to get the bike because the gang members assaulted the mother of one of Roar's friends who tried to get her son's stolen bike back. Varg meets leader of the gang, Joker, who appears to unstable and the situation between them escalates in ways Veum cannot anticipate. When a murder occurs in Roar's apartment, both Varg and Joker are witnesses and Varg manages to insinuate himself into the investigation.
At its core this book is typical detective noir with a Scandinavian twist. The series pre-dates the better known Wallender by several years, but is up there on the same level for me. ( )

This is the second of Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum novels, and dates back to 1979. It shows its age, but it's also a fairly compelling read. First the negative. The writing reminds me a lot of Raymond Chandler and other Americans of the noirish private eye school. At times the urban gloom and the hero's downbeat cynicism reads almost like parody. That could be a trick of translation, but it seems more like an influence not yet fully digested, and it makes 1979 feel even further back than it was. On the positive side, however, the novel is a good read, and the story draws one in. The further on you get, the more it emerges that things are not what they seem, and that the character who drives the plot has as many layers as an onion. Having started off with a very late Varg Veum, I am pleased to report that Staalensen's style gets better, while his plots remain interesting. ( )

Yours Until Death – Norwegian Noir at its best

Yours Until Death by the Norwegian writer Gunnar Staalesen was originally published in 1979 in his native Norway and in English for the first time in 1993 and now re-released by Arcadia Books and I think they are on a winner. More importantly he comes highly recommended by Jo Nesbø who calls him “A Norwegian Chandler” and having read and enjoyed this crime thriller I cannot disagree this is Norwegian Noir at its best.

Gunnar Staalesen in Yours Until Death introduces us to private detective Varg Veum a divorced man with an old battered mini, an office covered in dust and his favourite drink of aquavit and the city of Bergen in the shadow of the great Lyderhorn mountain.

This may have been written in the late 1970s but could have been written in the last twelve months when all the subject matter in the thriller comes up of single mother families, isolated communities in desperate concrete jungles. Teenage thugs are running wild around the estate, robbing, molesting their way around with no police presence.

When Roar a young boy appears at his office to employ him to get his bike back from the feral teens he enters a part of Bergen that the rest of the world has forgotten. When Roar’s father is murdered there seems to be no end of suspects all except the person you would expect. When the ringleader is also murdered Veum has to act fast before there are more innocent deaths and still find out who the killer is.

Yours Until Death is an excellent novel with all the traditions you would expect from a Private Detective thriller, it is fast paced with murder and revenge. It explores the themes of marriage and the reality of the break-down, what it is like for teenagers to grow up with no hope and that passion can be powerfully destructive.

Having read Yours Until Death I can see why Gunnar Staalesen is one of the bestselling authors of crime fiction in Norway as he commands all that he writes and engages the reader with aplomb. The imagery is dark and disturbing and even if this was written about the late 70s it could have been written recently just showing that nothing changes that much.

Yours Until Death is a stunning novel bringing home the best introduction for the sleuthing of Varg Veum who is just like Marlowe but with ice and snow running through his blood. ( )

Bad noir. Loaded with forgettable similes, metaphors, recollections of a kiss. Then there's this sentence: "And I hid my face between her legs so she wouldn't see me crying." Two murders in Bergen, Norway. Gangs of kids. Aquavit. Not much that reveals the Norwegian setting save a description of a ferry in the last few pages, and the names of countless towns...One star was generous. ( )