For those of you who lament the decline of the modern detective novel – and we are legion, to be sure – I have three words: Hans Olav Lahlum.  The Human Flies, his debut novel, is by no means perfect – it’s in need of a good edit, as there’s a tendency to repeat ad infinitum information gleaned and interpreted elsewhere – but it’s honestly about as close to a classically-motivated, -structured, and -executed novel as I imagine you’ll find in the 21st century.  The fact that it has almost the exact same setup as the likes of The Wooden Overcoat, The Black Shrouds and Our First Murder with a killing in a guest-house (here a small apartment block) of which one of the denizens is undoubtedly guilty certainly helps, but Lahlum is also smart enough to build on this base in very classical ways.  But for a few dates and key events – it is set in 1968 – this could almost have been written in the late 1940s.

To add to the fun, it also starts with an impossible murder: gunshots heard in an apartment, people rush to the scene before the killer would have chance to get away, and upon opening the locked door there’s a dead body but no killer, no weapon, and no other exit.  Cue detective Kolbjørn Kristiansen – that and his being blonde is pretty much all you’re told about him, so the nickname K2 may purely be a result of his initials rather than also his physical size – who swiftly finds himself out of his depth, as everyone in the building seems blameless, even given the victim’s relative celebrity and potential for enemies.  And then he gets a phone call…

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