Kind of like Sigrid Undset, only anti-Christian.

That’s my reaction after reading the first two volumes of Norwegian author Vidar Sundstøl’s “Minnesota Trilogy” – The Land of Dreams and Only the Dead.

Lance Hansen is a “forest cop” – a policeman in the Superior National Forest, in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region. He’s a good man, devoted to his (broken) family and fascinated with genealogy and local history. One day, while checking out an illegal camping spot, he finds a naked man babbling in a foreign language. At length he recognizes it as Norwegian, his father’s native tongue. Nearby he finds another naked man, viciously battered to death.

The case is quickly handed off to the FBI, as the crime scene is on federal land. But Lance keeps poking around the edges. Not to find the truth – he’s very much afraid he knows the truth – but because he saw something that day, something he has not told and will not tell anyone, for personal reasons. Continue reading Two-thirds of Vidar Sundstol’s ‘Minnesota Trilogy’ →