FROM THE PUBLISHER - Varg Veum is a down-at-heel private detective in Bergen, Norway. Fond of akvavit, he has a broken marriage behind him and is training to run a marathon. A chance conversation with a retired policeman arouses his interest in two old, unsolved cases: a disastrous fire in a paint factory caused by arson in 1953, and the brutal murder of a suspected Gestapo informer and hired killer nearly twenty years later. Veum sifts meticulously through the past, is threatened and beaten up as he interviews millionaires and down-and-outs, but eventually brings his investigations to a surprising - even shocking - conclusion. AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is a complex, richly textured novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler or Ross Macdonald, yet at the same time Staalesen writes originally and with an unmistakable individuality. As well as being an exciting thriller, the book tells us a good deal about contemporary Norway, and the setting, Bergen, emerges as a living city, through whose streets and harbour alleyways Veum roams in search of the recent past.