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Contents ( 56)
  1. Fallen Angels
  2. FALLEN ANGELS
  3. CONTENTS
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. 7
  11. 8
  12. 9
  13. 10
  14. 11
  15. 12
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  17. 14
  18. 15
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  20. 17
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  30. 27
  31. 28
  32. 29
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  34. 31
  35. 32
  36. 33
  37. 34
  38. 35
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  40. 37
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  50. 47
  51. 48
  52. 49
  53. 50
  54. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  55. ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
  56. COPYRIGHT

She never appeared in court. She had entered a long, heavy darkness.

But these December days did something to me too.

After spending Christmas with Thomas I came face to face with a serried rank of bottles that followed me like loyal reserve soldiers far into the New Year.

I whiled away time at the office, put days and nights in my pockets, never to take them out again, wrote my notes on the back of wallpaper, on the clouds that blew past, and in other useful places.

A couple of times I invited Karin Bjørge out to dinner, without ever inviting her home. A couple of times I dropped in on Laila Mongstad at her office and wondered what it would be 390like to make love to her, without doing anything about it. I saw nothing of Rebecca and Jakob. Jakob was safe from any prosecution – 1975 was too long ago now for the police to legally investigate him.

A few clients came, jobs came and went.

But the greatest part of the time I spent alone and the only soulmates I woke up with were empty bottles.

Winter passed and in the end it was spring. A light like phosphorus flooded over a fresh, clean town, but when I went out it hurt. The spring sun was like a spear in your heart and spring is the cruellest of all seasons: the time when nature renews itself while all you have done is become a year older.

And all this time I thought about Sissel. There wasn’t a day that passed when she wasn’t on my mind. She was another refugee in involuntary exile. Another person who had definitively passed the invisible border between being a child and becoming an adult. Another fallen angel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. He is the author of over twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour). Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted for the award in 2019. He lives with his wife in Bergen.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Don Bartlett completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbo and Karl Ove Knausgaard. He has previously translated The Consorts of Death, Cold Hearts, We Shall Inherit the Wind, Where Roses Never Die, Wolves in the Dark, Big Sister and Wolves at the Door in the Varg Veum series.

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