Stavern, County of Vestfold og Telemark, 12.30 p.m. At the Det Gule Galleriet hostel, the service is in full swing with a clientele with blond hair that tends to be seriously white. Further on, a couple is reflected in the waters of the fjord; barely a car on the horizon. Such is life in this town of some 6,000 souls, located 140 kilometers south of Oslo. You have to have a lot of imagination to plant in this a priori peaceful place heinous crimes and various forms of violence. Jorn Lier Horst, a 53-year-old ex-policeman, has plenty of it. It’s here, in its incredible childish lair – where trophies, international editions, newspapers, photos, etc. are stored. -, lost in a huge building with a flamboyant naval past, that he created the investigations of William Wisting, inspector in Larvik, the “big” local town, whose tourist office offers a “Wistings Universe”, an astonishing signposted route in the footsteps of the commissioner. Fifteen cases already to his credit since 1995 (the last has not yet been translated into French), and as many successes.
The Norwegian novelist in his office at Stavern
© / PM
It is that, failing to shudder with fear – “in 2022, we counted 27 murders in the kingdom of Harald V, all solved”, entrusts Horst -, the Norwegians throw themselves on the thrillers with, in the first line, their two standard bearers, Jo Nesbo and Jorn Lier Horst. Do the latter stick together to face the tough Nordic competition, Arnaldur Indridason, Camilla Läckberg, Jussi Adler-Olsen…? “Nesbo is not very sociable”, tells us, with a smirk, his junior of ten years, not really disturbed. And for good reason, it is published in more than 35 languages and the series Wisting, adapted from his novels, is a hit in some 180 countries… In France too, the sauce has taken hold. It was Gallimard, already publisher of Nesbo, which set its sights, in 2017, on the citizen of Stavern, by publishing the 7th survey (Closed for winter) of the fetish commissioner, and who did not let go until this 14th investigation (the most violent of all), Evil in person, out these days. A happy publisher (430,000 copies, all formats combined), ready to move up a gear by reissuing in Folio, under an elegant white cover, five of the seven previously published titles.
For a long time, Horst wrote between 5 and 7 a.m., before taking up his post at the Larvik police station. Then one day, in 2013, after receiving several awards, he quit to pursue his only hobby. With enthusiasm: in less than twenty years, he has already stored 15 Wisting, 3 four-handed thrillers (with Thomas Enger) and 27 novels for young people (some of which, from the Clue series, are published by Rageot). Comment from the Stakhanovist: “I don’t watch football, I don’t need to kill time and I don’t know how to do nothing, so I write. And then, I’ve always been passionate about crimes, c That’s also why I joined the police, after reading Henning Mankell. I wanted to be an investigator like Wallander.” Less depressive than the latter and less ramshackle than Harry Hole, Nesbo’s creature, William Wisting (a surname inspired by the great explorer of the South and North Poles) is a bit like his master, an “ordinary” cop , competent, conscientious, good family man and no hangover.
However, he would have needed a little aquavit to face Tom Kerr, a despicable killer of young women, a torturer at will. While he was briefly taken out of his Ila prison for re-enactment purposes (he confessed to the murder of a missing woman whom he says he buried long ago in the forest of Eftanglandet), he managed to escape despite the large police force. A long-standing plot, it seems, with the help of “the Other”, a friend whose identity we do not know. And a fiasco for the police. Aided by his right-hand man, Nils Hammer, and by his daughter, Line, a freelance journalist, but pursued by the aggressiveness of an internal affairs investigator, Wisting struggles to unravel the – false – leads and unearth the Other. . For this dive into the universe of absolute evil, Horst drew inspiration, he writes in the postscript, from the works of psychiatrist Pal Grondahl and psychologist Philip Zimbardo; for the rest, he is as ingenious, meticulous and creative as usual. Virtues of the school of… crime.
Evil himself, by Jorn Lier Horst, trans. from Norwegian by Céline Romand-Monnier. Gallimard, 416 pages, €20.