#RivetingReads: Gunnar Staalesen recommends ELSKEDE POONA “Calling Out for You/The Indian Bride”) by Karin Fossum

If you are going to read only one Nordic Noir novel in your life, you should read this. It has both an English title and an American one, but whatever it is called, the book is the masterpiece of modern Norwegian crime fiction, judged as the best-ever Norwegian crime novel by the newspaper Dagbladet in 2009. In the novel we meet Gunder Jomann, who has married Poona, a woman from India, who he is going to fetch at the airport. But a traffic accident stops him, and Poona is later found murdered. The case is in the hands of Karin Fossum’s detective, the sympathetic police inspector Konrad Sejer. It is a touching love story and one of the most shattering crime novels in Norwegian literature, with an ending that you will never stop thinking about.

Recommended by Gunnar Staalesen

Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway in 1947. He is the author of more than twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and have sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour) and most recently the Petrona Award for the international bestseller Where Roses Never Die.