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An unbearably tense novel of revenge, murder, bereavement and the destructive force of passion. The single-mother families of the isolated community under the shadow of the Pyderhorn, Bergen's greatest mountain, are being terrorised by a teenage gang. But teenage violence is nothing compared to what awaits detective Varg Veum when he gets to know the blue-eyed Wenche Andersen.

When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline 'YOUNG MAN MISSING', he realises he saw the youth just a few days earlier - en route to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen. Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he's pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.

September 1977. Mette Misvãr, a three-year-old girl, disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found.

Bergen Private Investigator Varg Veum is perplexed when two wildly different cases cross his desk at the same time. A lawyer, anxious to protect her privacy, asks Varg to find her sister, who has disappeared with her husband, seemingly without trace, while a ship carrying unknown cargo is heading towards the Norwegian coast, and the authorities need answers. Varg immerses himself in the investigations, and it becomes clear that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling - and increasingly uncanny - similarities to events that took place 36 years earlier.

In this crime drama, detective Varg Veum's adventures take him into the world of privileged teenage girls who have been drawn into drugs and prostitution. The situation worsens when the local judge is found dead in a luxury hotel, clad only in women's lingerie. Called in by anxious parents to look for a missing daughter and explain the judge's death, Varg is led deep into Bergen's criminal underworld.

It's 1998. Varg Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend, Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he's made. Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, Varg Veum is thrust into one of the most challenging cases of his career, riddled with conflicts, environmental terrorism, religious fanaticism, unsolved mysteries and dubious business ethics.

When Bergen PI Varg Veum finds himself at the funeral of a former classmate on a sleet-grey December afternoon, he’s unexpectedly reunited with his old friend Jakob – the once-famous lead singer of 1960s rock band The Harpers – and his estranged wife, Rebecca, Veum’s first love. Their rekindled friendship come to an abrupt end with a horrific murder, and Veum is forced to dig deep into his own adolescence and his darkest memories, to find a motive...and a killer.

PI Varg Veum has returned to duty following a stint in rehab, but his new composure and resolution are soon threatened when three complex cases arrive on his desk in quick succession. A man is found dead in an elite swimming pool and a young woman has gone missing. Most chillingly, Varg Veum is asked to investigate the ‘Camilla Case’: an eight-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a little girl who was never found.

Reeling from the death of his great love, Karin, Varg Veum's life has descended into a self-destructive spiral of alcohol, lust, grief and blackouts. When traces of child pornography are found on his computer, he's accused of being part of a paedophile ring and thrown into a prison cell. There, he struggles to sift through his past to work out who is responsible for planting the material...and who is seeking the ultimate revenge.

One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault...crimes that Veum himself once stood wrongly accused of committing.

It is September 1995, and Veum is in his office when a telephone call takes him back 25 years, to a case where a small boy was separated from his mother under tragic circumstances. In the following decades, the same boy had surfaced in connection with several murder cases. Now, as an adult, he is determined to take revenge on those responsible for destroying his life - among them the former child protection officer who is now Detective Veum.

On a frosty January day in Bergen, private detective Varg Veum is visited by a prostitute. Her friend Margrethe hasn't been seen for days. Before her disappearance, something had unsettled her: she'd turned away a customer and returned to the neighbourhood in terror. Shortly after taking the case, Veum is confronted with a brutal reality. He soon finds the first body - and it won't be the last either. His investigation leads him into a dark subculture where corrupted idealism has had deadly consequences.

Varg Veum receives a surprise visit in his office. A woman introduces herself as his half sister, and she has a job for him. Her goddaughter, a 19-year-old trainee nurse from Haugesund, moved from her bedsit in Bergen two weeks ago. Since then no one has heard anything from her. She didn't leave an address. She doesn't answer her phone. And the police refuse to take her case seriously. Veum's investigation uncovers a series of carefully covered up crimes and pent-up hatreds....

Nytårsnat år 1900 bliver konsul Carl August Frimann dræbt i sit hjem i Bergen. Dette gådefulde mord danner udgangspunkt for første bind i Gunnar Staalesens bredt fortalte og farverige romantrilogi om livet i det myldrende Bergen op igennem det 20. århundrede. På baggrund af verdenshistoriens dramatiske begivenheder, opløsningen af den svensk-norske union, ubådskrig, strejker og politiske modsætninger.

Varg Veum får et overraskende besøg på sit kontor af en kvinde, han aldrig har set før. Hun præsenterer sig som hans halvsøster, og hun har en opgave til ham. Hendes guddatter, en nittenårig sygeplejeelev fra Haugesund, er to uger tidligere flyttet ud af sit værelse i et bofællesskab, og siden har ingen hørt noget fra hende. Hun har ikke oplyst nogen ny adresse. Hun svarer ikke på sin mobiltelefon. Politiet har endnu ikke taget sagen alvorligt.

Efter en henvendelse fra en mor dykker Varg Veum ned i Bergens underverden og finder et modbydeligt og dødsensfarligt net af prostitution blandt teenagepiger.

Varg Veum har to sager at løse: han skal finde en ung kvinde, som er forsvundet i Bergens narkomiljø, og hjælpe en sydafrikansk mand i hans kamp mod udlændingepolitiets bureaukrati. Det tager ikke lang tid, før Veum forstår, at de to sager er forbundne.

Andet bind i Gunnar Staalesens farverige romantrilogi om livet i Bergen i det 20. århundrede begynder med endnu et gådefuldt dødsfald, da den kvindekære prædikant Peter Paulus Hagas findes druknet i fjorden. På et bredt historisk lærred - fra sommerolympiaden i Berlin 1936, over krigen med landsforræderi, modstandskamp og tysk terrorregime og frem til den kolde krig - følger vi igen familierne Moland, Brandt, Nesbø og Helgesen, alt imens nye slægtled kommer til og danner nye mønstre af kærlighed og svig, forventninger og savn, succes og fiasko.

Tredje og afsluttende bind i Gunnar Staalesens storslåede romantrilogi om det myldrende liv i Bergen i det 20. århundrede begynder med efterlysningen af den 11-årige Veslemøy Heggøy. Samtidig hviler skyggen af mordet på konsul Frimann nytårsnat år 1900 over de næste generationer i familierne Nesbø, Thorsen, Moland og Brandt - samt ikke mindst over privatdetektiven Varg Veum, der gør sit eget forsøg på at opklare den gamle sag.

Varg Veum er på vej hen til sin bil, da han med nød og næppe undgår at blive kørt ned af en bilist, der tilsyneladende styrer direkte imod ham og efterfølgende forsvinder i mørket i retning mod byen. Oplevelsen får ham til at tænke på to dødsannoncer han har læst indenfor de sidste måneder. To af mændene som har sonet en dom i en overgrebssag, som Varg Veum selv i en kort periode var fejlagtigt sigtet i, er omkommet på måder, som politiet har defineret som ulykker.