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Product Description
Book Description
Noirish Scandanavian crime from the bestselling Norwegian author.
Product Description
Katrine Bratterud is on the verge of finishing a spell in drug rehab. One evening celebrating her success at the shore of a lake she senses that she is not alone. In the dim early morning light she sees a naked man approaching from out of the woods... The discovery of Katrine's corpse the following day brings police officers Gunnarstranda and Frolich onto the case and into a world of secrets and lies that stretches back generations.
Katrine's past as a prostitute makes her easy prey to a series of men, who immediately become suspects - and victims. In a world of secrets can the Oslo Detectives find out the truth about these grisly murders in time before the killer strikes again...?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is the third of the police procedural novels
featuring the Oslo detectives Gunnarstranda and Frolich
to be published in English.Although published out of
sequence,this did not spoil my enjoyment of this first
rate novel.
A reformed drug addict Katrine is murdered after a party.
The last thing she sees is a naked man.The investigation
proves very challenging for the two detectives,but the
police procedural aspect of the novel is excellent,which
together with an imaginative plot and ending,make this a
good read.
featuring the Oslo detectives Gunnarstranda and Frolich
to be published in English.Although published out of
sequence,this did not spoil my enjoyment of this first
rate novel.
A reformed drug addict Katrine is murdered after a party.
The last thing she sees is a naked man.The investigation
proves very challenging for the two detectives,but the
police procedural aspect of the novel is excellent,which
together with an imaginative plot and ending,make this a
good read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Translated by Don Bartlett. The Last Fix is a very enjoyable, if ultimately sad, police procedural set in Oslo, Norway. Katrine, a young woman who works part-time in a travel agent, is attacked by a customer demanding money. Shaken by this event, Katrine's older colleague, Elise, makes the girl admit that the attack had something to do with her past. The events and mystery of Katrine's past are the driving force of what follows.
The framework of the novel is a staple classic of crime-fiction: there is a group of witnesses and possible suspects; the police interview them all and try to reconstruct the crime and hence find out who was responsible for a particularly cruel murder. In parallel, under the surface, the story is replete with acutely presented social commentary and insight. Broadly, there are two main elements to the investigation: the victim's current lifestyle and associates; and the group of older people, at least one or more of whom must have figured in the past. Revelations come from within both elements which lead to an eventual solution, but the truth only emerges when the past is fully uncovered and the police can make the complete deduction.
In common with the best of crime fiction, this novel is much to do with false perceptions and the author's ability, aided and abetted by translator supreme, Don Bartlett, to throw the reader off the track, both directly and via letting the reader draw the wrong conclusion from what some of the witnesses say or think. Re-reading the first chapter of the book near the end, when the visit to the travel agent's is retold from another point of view, is one of many examples in which it can be seen how the police, other characters and the reader can be fooled into making the wrong assumption. The very title of the novel also falls into this category.
I highly recommend this absorbing novel. A review is too brief a space to touch on all the aspects of it that I liked, but there is lots of black humour and observational philosophy in the interplay between the police, and a genuine, deep humanity in the initially sparse but gradually fleshed-out tale of the central character.
The publisher (Faber) is not very helpful in first, publishing this series out of order (in translation); and second in not providing a chronological list of the titles in the front of the book. The Last Fix is the most recent to be published in English, but in fact is second in the series as a whole. The other two that have been translated so far are The Man in the Window (no 3) and The Fourth Man (no 5).
The full version of this review is at my blog, Petrona.
The framework of the novel is a staple classic of crime-fiction: there is a group of witnesses and possible suspects; the police interview them all and try to reconstruct the crime and hence find out who was responsible for a particularly cruel murder. In parallel, under the surface, the story is replete with acutely presented social commentary and insight. Broadly, there are two main elements to the investigation: the victim's current lifestyle and associates; and the group of older people, at least one or more of whom must have figured in the past. Revelations come from within both elements which lead to an eventual solution, but the truth only emerges when the past is fully uncovered and the police can make the complete deduction.
In common with the best of crime fiction, this novel is much to do with false perceptions and the author's ability, aided and abetted by translator supreme, Don Bartlett, to throw the reader off the track, both directly and via letting the reader draw the wrong conclusion from what some of the witnesses say or think. Re-reading the first chapter of the book near the end, when the visit to the travel agent's is retold from another point of view, is one of many examples in which it can be seen how the police, other characters and the reader can be fooled into making the wrong assumption. The very title of the novel also falls into this category.
I highly recommend this absorbing novel. A review is too brief a space to touch on all the aspects of it that I liked, but there is lots of black humour and observational philosophy in the interplay between the police, and a genuine, deep humanity in the initially sparse but gradually fleshed-out tale of the central character.
The publisher (Faber) is not very helpful in first, publishing this series out of order (in translation); and second in not providing a chronological list of the titles in the front of the book. The Last Fix is the most recent to be published in English, but in fact is second in the series as a whole. The other two that have been translated so far are The Man in the Window (no 3) and The Fourth Man (no 5).
The full version of this review is at my blog, Petrona.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"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.
"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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
"It's dangerous to have dreams because dreams make you vulnerable....
(3.5 stars) K. O. Dahl (Kjell Ola Dahl), a prize-winning author in Norway, has just had this third novel published in the U.S. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mary Whipple
Early Work And It Shows
Although I have read the previous two books by Dahl available in English translation, I found that I had to look back at the descriptions on Amazon to remind myself what they were... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Alex McEwan
Grim
An appalling book. It's poorly written, like a teenager trying to shock with salacious detail, interspersed with tediously banal narrative. Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2009 by Sam Brown
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