The Human Flies
One of the best characters in Lahlum’s Norwegian mystery, set in Oslo in 1968, isn’t its lead detective, Kolbein Kristiansen, but Patricia Louise I.E. Borchmann, the Sherlock to his Watson. If he were to make the comparison, Kristiansen would fancy himself as Sherlock, but this 18-year-old disabled genius runs rings around him.
Kristiansen has scored a high profile homicide case. Harald Olesen, a World War II resistance hero and former cabinet minister, has been found shot to death in his locked apartment. The fact that the entrance was monitored and there were no strangers in the building would imply death at a neighbor’s hand. A suicide note with a confession by another neighbor leaves Kristiansen and his superiors rather smugly congratulating themselves on a case solved. Patricia disagrees, however. She’s the brilliant daughter of an equally brilliant professor, and she was left paralyzed in a car accident. Reading of the murder, she summons Kristiansen, and from her study, without access to the crime scene, she can see it much more clearly than the detective, who was there.
Lahlum has woven an intricate locked room mystery. Each neighbor has something to hide, and Olesen’s supposedly heroic past in the Resistance plays a part. Kristiansen crosses the border to Sweden to learn more about Olesen’s elusive partner in those days. Patricia ventures from the safety of home to aid Kristiansen in unmasking the murderer, and they make a formidable pair. This is a tale in which both logic and emotions play an equal part. Patricia, almost cold but clear-headed, can see how the pieces fit together, while Kristiansen uncovers the long-simmering motives behind the murder. First in an excellent series.
