SCARRED

The current vogue of starting a crime novel with a scatter of short sketches can be intriguing; the clever part is interweaving the threads to form a colourful tapestry. In Scarred the setting is Norway: its culture, politics, crime, and a form of corruption that is pretty dark for readers accustomed to a lighter climate. Perhaps that is what lies behind our fascination with Nordic noir.

Enger’s Prologue opens with a snow cave collapsing on a small boy and his brother holding himself responsible for the death. Children, families and guilt permeate the novel from an early murder in a care home where a worker’s son discovers the mutilated corpse, to a family held hostage at the end. Scenes and scenarios come and go: in the present tense, in short chapters.

There is the politician: Justice Minister Trine, object of a smear campaign who, faced with a dilemma, is unable to defend herself. There is the accountant’s wife and toddler, photographed by a sinister watcher, similarly a mature student haunted by a stalker. Some of these are linked through friendship and all are connected by murder: victims, investigating cop – and one who is as much observer and Greek chorus as participant: Enger’s series character, a journalist called Henning. Somewhere there is a killer, maybe two, and always in the background are secrets so dire that in one case suicide is considered as the alternative to exposure.

The novel is a web of motives and family discord with childhood memories so dreadful that adults refuse to go there while others thrive on them, consorting with demons. There are flaws. A red herring is too quickly scotched. One crucial revelation fails to justify its suspenseful build-up – but who’s perfect? Enger is another exotic, he keeps you turning the pages: a sophisticated exponent of Scandinoir.