Gard SveenReviews

The second volume of Tommy Bergmann series is again very captivating. In this case, too, there are connections to earlier times, when Bergmann was still a young police officer. A young woman was found brutally mutilated at the time. Similar murders followed and someone was arrested for it. Well, 16 years later, another corpse is murdered in the same way. The murderer is in psychiatric solitary confinement. Who can this be?
Bergmann bites in this case. His team secretly helps him because you don't know who from the authorities you can still trust. Bergmann struggles with bournout symptoms, not only because he is getting closer and closer to the murderer but also because he learns more about his own past and feels infinitely lonely.
He is in great danger, but even his closest allies must expect death at any time.

I love to read WWII stories, I think it's because my Dad was a GI in England during it and Mom is an English war bride. That being said, I've read nothing on the war in Norway so I looked forward to enhancing my knowledge although fictionally. This book is well written for a debut novel, but the plot is almost too complex and the characters are hard to connect with. I think that the Scandinavian names are difficult for Americans to keep straight and mentally pronounce, so as a novel in Norway, it is much easier for others to relate to them. At first the book is hard to get in to with the switching of time periods between the 1940's and 2000's, but then it gets easier, I always like this. Tommy Bergmann is a hard character to like, but he is a fabulous, determined detective and that adds to the epic plot twist in the end. I'd like to give it 3 1/2 stars and will be reading the next in the series.

Complex and difficult

This is an amazing debut novel. Mr. Sveen has a gift for complex plotting in addition to his skills as a writer.

The setting is Norway, with a few scenes in England, Sweden and Germany. Tommy Bergmann is an Oslo detective investigating the skeletons of two women and a child found in 2003, buried in the forest. Clearly a homicide has occurred but when and why? A slightly implausible leap of logic sets him on the trail of the spies and the web of lies and deceit woven by a cell of Norwegian spies working against the Germans in WW2.

Tommy is an unhappy and dangerous man who is also a very very smart detective.

I received a review copy of "The Last Pilgrim: Tommy Bergrenn Series, Book 1" by Gard Sveen translated by Stephen T. Murray (AmazonCrossing) through NetGalley.com.