#Blogtour review - The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl

The Courier
Kjell Ola Dahl (trans Don Bartlett)
Orenda Books, 21 March 2019
PB, 314pp, e-book

This is my stop on the blogtour for Kjell Ola Dahl's new standalone thriller, The Courier. I'm grateful to Orenda Books and to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part and providing a free ARC of the book.

Set in three time periods - 1942, 1967 and 2015 - this is a complex novel, starting out as, ostensibly, a thrilling, if dark, war story but turning into something far darker and more interesting.

In 1942, in Oslo, occupied by the Nazis, Ester is doubly hunted: as a Jew, and as a courier for the Resistance. Barely escaping arrest, she flees to Sweden, continuing to work against the Occupation, and meeting the enigmatic, haunted Gerhard Falkum.

In 1967, a woman, Turid, who lost her mother in the war, is studying law. A man from the past, who died when she was still a child, turns up in Oslo, and events take a threatening turn for Ester.

In 2015, Turid discovers a brooch on sale which belonged to her mother. She sets out to retrieve it and to learn its story.

I enjoyed this book A LOT. It soon become clear that it was more than just a thriller. The sections in 1942 and 1967 (2015 is more of a coda, albeit crucial to understanding the book) are freighted with menace, with mysterious figures in dark, snowy streets, with the threat of arrest, betrayal and worse. The world of the Resistance is portrayed as small, claustrophobic, almost existing in synergy with the Norwegian police and Gestapo. (At one stage they're puzzling over the same murder). There are no descriptions of daring sabotage, it's office work, dull errands and freezing safe houses.

The story reminds us of what's easily forgotten - alongside war, political crime, and genocide, age old human entanglements, resentments and emotions continue, and it's these latter that seem to be the focus of the story and that raise it from being a matter of spying, propaganda and near misses to a tale of heart, blood, and revenge. The tense relationships between, for example, Ester and Gerhard in 1942, or her and Sverre in 1967, are strongly drawn and for me recalled some black and white movie where Burton and Taylor are about to begin screaming at each other (and then fall into each others' arms).

And yet... this book actually has layer upon layer. Deeper still, perhaps at the heart (or does it go further?) in this book is Ester's hatred of what's been done to her parents, to her people, to her. As though 1942 Oslo was a forge pressing out a new Ester, the woman we see in 1967 seems different, harder, marked by experience. We learn a little bit of what that experience was, of the things she's apparently done. It's enough to understand that for all this difference, the girl who got ready for a night out in 1942 Stockholm is linked to the woman of 1967 by at least thing - a desire for revenge.

All in all, this is a twisty little story where enemies are not always visible, conversations are marked by what is not said, and innocent childhood seems far, far away. One thing is clear - after 1942, nothing will be the same again for any of these characters.

I said above that I enjoyed reading this book, I should add to that that I'm not sure "enjoyed" is the right word for a rather dark story. It seems almost wrong to "enjoy" some of what goes on here. But it is a fine work. The characters are strongly drawn and everybody is sympathetic - to a point. At times, events are clouded by mystery, an effect enhanced by the different timelines although Kjell Ola Dahl keeps things on the right side of the line between "puzzling" and "baffling", and the relentless drive of the narrative - it is truly nailbiting at times, always thrilling - means the jumps are pretty easy to read through. The pacing is superb, building up to simultaneous climaxes in different periods which have a real sense of jeopardy (even though the structure means we know - or can guess - how things turned out).

As ever, Don Bartlett's translation gives us excellent, lucid English with just a hint of foreignness to remind the reader that this story does come from somewhere else, as it were, something I always think adds a little tingle.

I'd recommend The Courier to fans of spot fiction, historical or crime, and especially to those who like a mashup of all three.

You can buy The Courier from your local bookshop, including via Hive, from Waterstones, Blackwell's, or Amazon.

The blogtour continues - see the poster below for forthcoming posts and for any past ones you might have missed.