When It Grows Dark

Starred review from July 3, 2017
Horst’s excellent sixth William Wisting mystery to appear in English (after Ordeal) returns to the chief inspector’s early career in between his present-day reflections on his 30-plus years of service in Larvik, a small town in Norway’s southwest Vestfold county. As Wisting prepares to welcome trainee police officers, he receives a letter that plunges him and his students back into a nearly century-old cold case. Flash back to 1983. Wisting, a recently qualified uniformed police officer, is a new father to twins Line and Thomas and a devoted husband to Ingrid, the exemplary wife he will lose to illness years later. Horst minutely chronicles young Wisting’s private investigation into a major unsolved 1925 theft, undertaken after more experienced cops push him off a violent robbery case. Wisting learns to trust his ability to combine logic and intuition as he idealistically sets out to make a better world. This prequel is a fine starting place for newcomers.