Search for crime writers

Monday, June 10, 2013

Gunnar Staalesen

Gunnar Staalesen (born 19 October 1947 in Bergen) is a Norwegian writer. Staalesen has a Cand philol. degree from Universitetet i Bergen and he has worked at Den Nationale Scene, the main theater in Bergen.



Staalesen's is best known for his crime novels involving private detective Varg Veum. Staalesen has written over 20 crime novels and several other novels. They have been translated into 12 languages.

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Kjersti Scheen

Kjersti Scheen (born 1943) is a Norwegian journalist, illustrator, novelist, crime writer and children's writer.


She made her literary debut in 1976 with the children's book Fie og mørket.Her novel Teppefall from 1994 introduced a series of crime novels with ex actress "Margaret Moss" as the main character. Scheen was awarded the Gyldendal's Endowment in 1994 (shared with Bjørn Aamodt).

Many of her books have been translated into other languages.

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Pernille Rygg

Pernille A. Rønneberg born 10 June 1963 in Oslo ) is a Norwegian writer and translator.


Pernille Rygg debuted in 1995 with the crime novel The Butterfly Effect, which was translated into several languages. The sequel The Golden Section from 2000 was nominated for the Brage Prize in Fiction class for adults.

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Stein Riverton / Sven Elvestad

Sven Elvestad (September 6, 1884–December 18, 1934) was a Norwegian journalist and author. He is best known for his detective stories, which were published under the pen name Stein Riverton and translated to several languages, including German and English.


Elvestad was born as Kristoffer Elvestad Svendsen, in Fredrikshald (now Halden), a small town near the Swedish border. After, as a young office boy, embezzling money from his employer, he changed his name and started a new life as a journalist in Kristiania (Oslo).

He started writing crime stories, first as semi-documentary reports from the view of the reporter or as told by the retired police detective Asbjørn Krag (modelled on one or two well-known policemen). Soon Krag was developed into a classical private detective (though still with excellent connections to the police force). In 1908 Elvestad (under the pen name Kristian F. Biller) created the police detective Knut Gribb: a character that was taken over by several other writers in various magazines and series of paperbacks, and still exists. Some of Elvestad's Gribb mysteries were later published as Asbjørn Krag books, with the Riverton name on the cover. While this Krag, like Gribb, is a tough, clean-shaven policeman, the classical Krag is a thoughtful and somewhat mysterious, balding man in early middle age, wearing a goatee and pince-nez.

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Riverton's masterpiece was published already in 1909: Jernvognen (The Iron Carriage). This is a thriller, narrated in a neo-romantic style reminiscent of Knut Hamsun by a guest at a sea-side hotel in Southern Norway. Two violent deaths are connected to a local ghost legend. The possible connections puzzles the narrator, and he find himself threatened by the visiting detective, Krag. The narrative is complex, with a point of view that lets the author juggle with several levels of knowledge: What puzzles the reader might, or might not also puzzle the narrator and the murderer. In this novel, Elvestad used a certain narrative trick that was later ascribed to Agatha Christie.

In later thrillers (of which some were published under his real name) Elvestad plays on Freudian theories of the sub-conscious. In his latest mysteries he abandon the Krag character (who was nameless in books attributed to Elvestad) and aims at a more modern, realistic style. Though some of Riverton/Elvestad's stories are high class thrillers, the quality of his work varies.

Jo Nesbø

Jo Nesbø (born 29 March 1960) is an Edgar Award nominated Norwegian author and musician. As of September 2008 more than 1.5 million copies of his novels have been sold in Norway, and his work has been translated into over 40 languages.


Nesbø is primarily known for his crime novels about Inspector Harry Hole, but he is also the main vocalist and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre. In 2007 Nesbø also released his first children's book, Doktor Proktors prumpepulver (English translation: Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder). The 2011 film Headhunters is based on Nesbø's novel Hodejegerne (The Headhunters).

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Jørn Lier Horst

Jørn Lier Horst (born 27 February 1970, Bamble, Telemark), is a Norwegian author of crime fiction and a police officer, working in Larvik.


He made his debut in 2004 with the crime novel Key Witness, based on a true murder story. The detective character in his novels is William Wisting.

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Sunday, June 9, 2013

Anne Holt

Anne Holt (born 16 November 1958) is a Norwegian author and lawyer.


She was born in Larvik, grew up in Lillestrøm and Tromsø, and moved to Oslo in 1978. Holt graduated with a law degree from the University of Bergen in 1986, and worked for The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) in the period 1984 to 1988.

She then worked at the Oslo Police Department for two years, earning her right to practice as a lawyer in Norway. In 1990 she returned to NRK, where she worked one year as a journalist and anchor woman for the news program Dagsrevyen. Anne Holt started her own law practice in 1994, and served as Minister of Justice in Cabinet Jagland for a short period from November 25, 1996 to February 4, 1997. She resigned for health reasons, and was replaced by Gerd-Liv Valla.

In 1993 she made her debut as a novelist with the crime novel Blind gudinne, featuring the lesbian police officer Hanne Wilhelmsen. The two novels Løvens gap (1997) and Uten ekko (2000) are co-authored with her former state secretary Berit Reiss-Andersen.

She is one of the most successful crime novelists in Norway. She has been published in 25 countries. Val McDermid, a Scottish crime writer has once said that "Anne Holt is the latest crime writer to reveal how truly dark it gets in Scandinavia.”

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Frode Grytten

Frode Grytten (born 11 December 1960 in Bergen, but grew up in Odda) is a Norwegian writer and journalist. He is the author of the Brage Prize-winning novel Bikubesong ('Song of the Beehive'), and other collections of short stories and poetry. His works have been translated into Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Dutch, French, English, Albanian, Croatian and Chinese.


Grytten is a native of the industrial town Odda, which often features in his work.

As a journalist he has mainly worked for Bergens Tidende, the local newspaper of Bergen, Norway. He is also writing for the Oslo-based national newspaper Dagbladet.

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Ella Griffiths

Ella Griffiths (born 22 March 1926 in Oslo , died 1990 ) was a Norwegian writer.

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Griffiths made ​​her debut in 1957 with the novel Linked to love, and since authored a number of novels, crime novels, children's books and short stories. Her works have been translated into six languages.

Karin Fossum

Karin Fossum (b. 1954) is a Norwegian author of crime fiction, often referred to as the "Norwegian queen of crime".


Karin Mathisen was born on 6 November 1954 in Sandefjord in Vestfold county, Norway. She currently lives in Oslo. Fossum debuted as a poet with Kanskje i morgen, her first collection published in 1974 when she was just 20. It won Tarjei Vesaas' debutantpris. For a time she worked in hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation of drug addicts.

She is the author of the internationally successful Inspector Konrad Sejer series of crime novels, which have been translated into 25 languages and honoured with several awards.She won the Glass Key award for her novel Don't Look Back, which also won the Riverton Prize, and she was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger in 2005 for Calling Out For You.

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Thomas Enger

Thomas Enger was born in Oslo in 1973, but grew up in Jessheim. He has an education in journalism, and has also studied sports and history. He worked at the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen for nine years.


He has composed music and written books since the age of 18. He is also working on a musical.

Enger's first book, Skinndød, was published in 2010. It is the first book in a series of at least six featuring crime journalist Henning Juul. The second installment, Fantomsmerte, was released in the fall of 2011; Blodtåke, the third book, is scheduled for a 2012 release.

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Saturday, June 8, 2013

Tom Egeland

Tom Egeland (born 8 July 1959 in Oslo) is a Norwegian author. His great-grandfather was Jon Flatabø from Kvam in Hardanger, one of the pioneer authors of popular literature in Norway. Egeland's novels are published in 21 languages.


His most famous novel is Sirkelens ende, published in English under the title Relic, which deals with several of the same topics as The Da Vinci Code.Egeland's book was published in 2001, two years before The Da Vinci Code.

European readers and critics quickly noted some striking similarities between the Da Vinci Code and Relic. Like The Da Vinci Code, Relic involves an ancient mystery and a worldwide conspiracy, the discovery that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and an albino as one of the central characters. In both novels, the main female character turns out to be the last living descendant of Christ and Mary Magdalene, and the daughter/granddaughter of the last grand master of a secret order.

Many European readers have speculated that Dan Brown had plagiarized Tom Egeland's book. Since the Norwegian novel had not yet been translated into English when The Da Vinci Code came out, it is generally assumed today that the similarities between the two books, although striking, are coincidental.

The author himself, Tom Egeland, has in numerous interviews in European media dismissed the claim of Brown's novel plagiarizing his own novel, stating that the similarities just show that he and Brown more or less have done the same research and found the same sources.

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Egeland's novel Guardians of the Covenant has been translated into 17 languages. Both Guardians of the Covenant and the 2001 bestseller Relic have been acquired by the British publishing house John Murray.

The thriller Night of the Wolf (2005) - about Chechen terrorists taking control over a live television debate show - as also been made into a feature length movie and a TV mini-series. Egeland wrote the script himself.

In 2007 Tom Egeland published two books: The Girl in the Mirror (for young adults) and Guardians of the Covenant, a thriller with the same main character as Relic: The albino archaeologist Bjørn Beltø.

Egeland's thriller The Gospel of Lucifer was published in Norwegian in May 2009 and has been translated into 12 languages. The novel was awarded the Norwegian Riverton Prize for best crime novel 2009.

Kjell Ola Dahl

Kjell Ola Dahl (K. O. Dahl) (born 4 February 1958) is a Norwegian writer.


 He has written eleven novels since 1993, mostly crime novels with a psychological interest. So far, four of his novels have been published in English, translated by Don Bartlett. They feature the Oslo detectives Frank Frølich and Inspector Gunnarstranda. These translations have been published in the reverse order to which they were written.

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Lars Saabye Christensen

Lars Saabye Christensen, born 21 September 1953 in Oslo, is a Norwegian author.


Saabye Christensen was raised in the Skillebekk neighbourhood of Oslo, but lived for many years in Sortland in northern Norway; both places play a major role in his work. He currently lives in Blindern, the university district of Oslo.

He is half Danish and holds Danish rather than Norwegian citizenship.

He has written numerous poems and plays, and several film scripts, but is best known as a novelist. His first novel was published the year after Historien om Gly and titled Amatøren (The Amateur). Among his most noted works are the novels Beatles (1984) (for which he won the Cappelen Prize) and Halvbroren (The Half Brother, 2001) (for which he won the Brage Prize, two other Norwegian literary awards, and The Nordic Council's Literature Prize, and which was shortlisted for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). Other notable books by Saabye Christensen are Herman, Gutten Som Ville Være En Av Gutta, Maskeblomstfamilien and Modellen.

Only one of his considerable list of publications, which includes drama and children's books, could be classified as a thriller.

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