A young woman, Katrine Bratterud, has problems with drugs. 
Leaving her lover asleep in a car, she strays to the shore of a lake. With dawn breaking, she sees a man approaching her. A naked man. It is the last thing Katrine will ever see.
This is the intriguing opening on the most recent installment in K O Dahl’s series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Gunnarstranda and his assistant Frank Frølich. The Last Fix is a great and much rewarded novel – it has won the Riverton Prize 2000 for Best Norwegian Crime Novel of the Year, was nominated for the Brage Literary Prize 2000 for Best Norwegian Literary Novel of the Year, The Glass Key (Glasnyckeln) 2000 for Best Nordic Crime Novel of the Year and the Martin Beck Award 2001 for Best Foreign Crime Novel of the Year. Also, it has been excellently translated by Don Bartlett.
The Last Fix is the third crime fiction novel in the series translated into English, but actually the second in this series – the English translations are out of sequence. The two previous books were The Fourth Man and The Man in the Window.
Like the previous books, this too is a police procedural that is also a social novel – as many Scandinavian crime fiction novels are, following in the footsteps of Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Henning Mankell and others. To me, the caustic observations and commentary on life in modern Norway add authenticity and value to K O Dahl’s books. And so does Dahl’s excellent prose, understatements, dry humor and skillful building of tension.
Why did Katrine Bratterud disappear? And why did she have to die? The dynamic duo Gunnarstranda and Frølich have another tough case to solve. Maybe this time even a case that cannot be solved, as there are few leads to go by. The investigation is hard and very time consuming, and the detectives soon start to focus on possible motives. Is there something in Katrine’s past as an addict and prostitute that holds the key to the crime? Or could one of the staff members of the rehabilitation center be the murderer?
This is an intelligent, suspenseful and entertaining book. The police procedural aspect is excellent, with lots of interesting details of a modern police procedure, and the plot very good. I liked the ending a lot too.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I just read and enjoyed The Last Fix. And have added it to my database, esequels.com. But why doesn’t Gunnarstranda have a first name? Has Dahl ever mentioned his first name?
I don’t think he has a first name. Not yet, anyway.