It’s not often I finish reading a book with the feeling of, “Glad that’s over.” But that was my response to The Assistant, a stand-alone novel by Kjell Ola Dahl, one of the big guns of Scandinavian Noir.

There are two parallel narrative threads in this book. In 1924, a young man with the non-Norwegian name of Jack Rivers works as a driver for a bootlegger. Though a thrill-seeker and a bit of a rogue, Jack would rather be doing something legal. But there’s a depression on, and he takes what work he can get. Eventually he will be arrested by the incorruptible policeman Ludvig Paaske, who nevertheless takes a liking to him. Jack has a sense of honor and is faithful to his friends, something those friends do not reciprocate.

In 1938, Jack is out of prison, now working as an assistant for Paaske, who has become a private detective. Paaske is approached, in the classic Hard-boiled manner, by a beautiful woman who wants him to follow her husband. She suspects he’s being unfaithful.

Her husband, it turns out, is the bootlegger Jack used to work for, now a successful businessman and politician. And the wife is not being entirely honest. Both Jack and Paaske will have reunions with women they cared about in the past, and each will worry that the other is being manipulated. In addition, Nazi agents are involved.

The Assistant is a moodier and more thoughtful book than the average mystery. I suspect it might be more evocative in the original Norwegian. This translation seemed good to me at first, but seemed to deteriorate as it went along. Sometimes it was ploddingly literal (a vice hard to avoid, as I can say from experience). And sometimes it seemed like a rush job to me, the author having given up on finding the right words. The first time someone made coffee in a “pan,” I thought it was due to their poverty, but eventually I realized the translator must have blanked on the words “pot” and “kettle” all through. And the parliament is referred to as “Stortinget,” which is technically correct but won’t be familiar to many English-language readers.

I need to mention that a Labor Party speech gets fact-checked by Paaske at one point (that’s rare in a Norwegian book), and one character’s Christian piety is  treated with respect.

But I didn’t believe this story. It was operatic – the main characters make great, Quixotic gestures that seem both irrational and out of character. And the two different timelines share so much in location, characters and action that they were hard to keep straight.

Also, the ending just left me floundering.

I can’t really recommend The Assistant.