Thursday 11 August 2016

Samuel Bjørk. I'm Travelling Alone (London: Doubleday, 2015)



I’m Travelling Alone is the first crime story by Samuel Bjørk, a pen name of a Norwegian writer and artist (1969- ) based in Trondheim, who has published two earlier non-crime novels under his real name Frode Sander Øien.


Bjørk has been compared with the usual suspects; Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbø. This was a little premature based on his first crime novel. His agency page states that “over the course of several books we follow” the careers of his detective characters Holger Munch and Mia Krüger (http://ahlanderagency.com/writer/samuel-bjork/). This is a little premature too, considering that so far there are only two books in the series. Bjørk has a bright future among the stars of Nordic crime writing, but his publicists should curb their enthusiasm.


I’m Travelling Alone was published in Norway in 2013 with the title Det henger en engel alene i skogen (“An Angel Hangs Alone in the Woods”). The second book in the series, Uglen (“The Owl” translated as The Owl Always Hunts at Night) was published in 2015 and the English translation comes out in August 2016.

A little girl has been murdered, and as Mia Krüger says when she first sees the evidence file “there will be others” (p57). The case becomes the biggest media story in Norway, and the Oslo police reopens Holger Munch’s special unit to deal with it: “a united government is backing this investigation with unlimited resources” (p99), the Prime Minister “has been informed” (Ibid.).


I’m Travelling Alone begins as a straightforward tale of murder with a clear structure: chapter one shows a witness discover a dead little girl; chapter two introduces Mia Krüger; chapter 3 introduces Holger Munch. The novel has short chapters with a break in time, place and usually also characters between chapters. This makes the narrative move briskly. Bjørk’s methodical approach to story-telling is also evident in his chapter openings: the novel has 89 chapters and 71 of them start with the name of a character who takes a leading role in that chapter.
 

The narrative soon breaks into a complex web of plotting involving a care home, a reclusive Christian cult, the National Theatre, the offices of Aftenposten, the Oslo transvestite community and the two detectives’ personal circumstances. There are a large number of characters; about 30 are named, most of them with backstories. Some of these backstories have been included almost mechanically and make no contribution to the main narrative, except to emphasise the quantity of unhappy childhoods and failed marriages in Norway. The author seems fond of names starting with ‘M’ – female leads are Mia, Malin, Miriam, and Marion. There are also Marianne, Markus, Maiken, Mikkel and Margrete and police chief Mikkelson.


The plotting is good; Bjørk stays in control of the plot and carries all plotlines safely to the end. The timeline grows a little hazy in places. Because it is not clear when chapter 6 takes place, the reader is tricked to consider a dead man as a potential suspect. In chapter 27, Tobias Iversen meets a girl called Rakel; in chapter 45 we see Tobias again “the day after he met Rakel” (p264). Unless Norwegian criminals, journalists and forensics experts work extremely fast, it is hard for the reader to believe that all the events in chapters 28 to 44 took place in less than 24 hours.


The narrative perspective is tightly with one character at a time. This excludes wide-ranging explanations by the narrator and leaves space for the reader’s imagination to bring these characters to life. The use of shifting perspective works well throughout the novel to provide narrative thrust and interest. The introduction of the newly assembled team of detectives through the eyes of a new recruit Gabriel Mørk (chapter 19) is effective. Chapters told from the perspective of Tobias Iversen, for example his child’s view of the police investigation (pp157-158) work well, too.


Bjørk’s style of writing is often melodramatic. There are several sections that describe dreams or mentally disturbed or drunken states in a style close to stream of consciousness. This narrative device gives an interesting parallel to the reader’s experience when Mia Krüger’s mind works through the fragments of the murder case (pp207-208); but elsewhere, in Mia Krüger’s drunken insomnia (p275) or her exhaustion-induced confusion (p421) or Malin Stoltz’s dream-state (chapter 55) it hams-up melodrama without adding to the story.


When Mia Krüger confronts the “strawberry-blonde psychopath” (p440 twice), the scene lacks plausibility. The “strawberry-blonde psychopath” keeps insisting that they are playing a game (pp423, 435, 436, 437) with a clumsy attempt to appear child-like (which makes no-sense, as she has so far assumed a maternal role). This is a traditional scene where the triumphant evil villain confesses to the detective in order to demonstrate their superior intellect: “I’m smarter than you.” (p427). Drama is drummed up so forcefully by the author that the suspension of disbelief cracks.


Stylistically there are a couple of tics in the novel: Mia Krüger’s addiction to “lozenges” (pp.39, 180, 199, 225, 235, 254, 255, 283, 284,298, 313, 360) and the characters’ general habit of winking at each other (pp.140 twice, 152, 201,202, 205, 232, 259, 260, 271 twice, 309, 324, 345 twice, 363, 395, 408 twice, 426, 454, 471) are unnerving. 


Overall, Munch and Krüger are a promising double act in a well-plotted and largely engaging crime novel. But it is Krüger’s character that lets the story down. The ghost of Lisbeth Salander haunts Mia Krüger. Mia Krüger’s cult status as a national detective superhero and a wunderkind of criminal psychology is overegged and unconvincing. She “had always been able to see straight through everyone.” (p.16). “It was clear everyone had huge respect for Mia Krüger and her brain.” (p102) She is “unique” (pp. 49, 79), she is “famous” (p100), she has “her own fan pages on Facebook” (p100), her personality is discussed and analysed on internet forums (p101): “It was fascinating.” (Ibid.)


To the reader, Mia Krüger comes across as tediously flat. In her mind, she compares another character Karen to herself: “Not a single wrinkle. She didn’t carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. She worked in a care home. A world away from that of a worn-out investigator with thin skin.” (p402) Mia Krüger here verges on the ridiculous in her self-dramatization. Holger Munch, “a fat amiable nerd,” (p21) is a much more successful character, built out his actions and dialogue, rather than repetitive descriptions of his mental state, like Mia Krüger.


Mia Krüger is entirely made up of her tragic past (p23, 369, 433), her reputation, her lozenges and her exhaustion. Mia starts the story with her mind confused by pills and alcohol and contemplating suicide (pp 14-15; 23-4). She continues to teeter on the verge of collapse throughout the narrative (pp. 100, 101, 306, 331, 332, 333, 343, 401, 402, 421, 463, 473); her most heroic achievement is to manage to stay awake until the end of the story. It is almost with a sigh of relief we finally see her fall asleep on the last page (p473).


I’m Travelling Alone is about children. It is about the need to have children, but even more it is about how adults treat children. Tobias and Torben Iversen have parents who argue and neglect them; they “had experienced things that no child should.” (p62). According to Pastor Simon, children “had to be purified” (p245), and, he says, “Rakel, the special girl” (p246) “needs a little time alone with God, and with me.” (p248). A horrible moment Bjørk has created well. Emotional tension peaks in the novel when a choice has to be made between two little girls – one to be saved one to lose her life (chapters .40 and 42). A teacher sums up the theme towards the end of the book: “You shouldn’t be allowed to treat children like this.” (p461) and, more forcefully, in italics in the text: “How could this be allowed to happen? What on earth had people done to these children?” (p463). With this central theme, it is curious that the lives and families of the murder victims, the dead little girls, do not feature in the story at all. 


Childhoods, good or bad, live on in the adult characters: in Mia Krüger (p29, 287) in Lukas (p106), in Miriam Munch (p293, 336), in Malin Stoltz (p314). Badly treated children grow up to be damaged adults, if not abusive themselves then at least miserable and unhappy. That goes for both criminals and detectives.

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