AMERICAN BY DAY by Derek B. Miller

This appears to be a sequel of sorts to Norwegian By Night which also sounds like a ripper of a novel. This novel opens with Chief Inspector Sigrid Odegard on a forced leave following the violent outcome at the end of the earlier novel. She has gone back to her father's farm, spend a bit of time, find some sort of inner peace. Instead she finds that her father is in a bit of a state, having not heard from his first born child, Sigrid's brother Marcus. Marcus lives in the US, upstate New York, in an academic position at the university there. Life for him has not been easy following the death of their mother from cancer when they were children, and that for some perverse reason he seems to hold himself responsible for. Marcus is a regular letter writer to his father, and had recently fallen in love. Now, for some unexplained reason, the letters have stopped. Unbeknownst to Sigrid, her father has bought her flights to New York to go and find her brother.

No rest for the wicked! The USA is unknown territory to Sigrid, and she finds herself in a society, a city, a community in all sorts of turmoil and at complete odds with the way life is lived out in Norway. She locates the sheriff of the County that Marcus lives in, and finds out that not only has Marcus disappeared and is a wanted man, but that his lady friend, Lydia is dead having fallen from the fifth floor of an abandoned building. Central to the whole story is the shooting by a white police officer of Lydia's 12 year old nephew, a black boy, who was playing goodies and baddies with his two white school friends, with a pretend gun in his front yard. Into this terrible mess comes Sigrid with her Norwegian calm, perceptiveness, meticulous and analytical detective work methods. Her antithesis is the sheriff, Irving Wiley, a man of extraordinary compassion, intellect, and diplomacy, walking the narrow tightrope between a hurt and angry black community, a frightened, knee jerk white community, with the law hovering somewhere in between. The story takes place late 2008, just before the US Presidential election that will see Obama become the first black president. Hence the unease.

Together Sigrid and Irv make quite the team as do the other characters, who although minor, are as deeply rounded and developed characters as Sigrid and Irv are. We see America entirely through Sigrid's eyes - a place she simply cannot understand - its free for all gun laws and how somehow this is not responsible for random gunshot deaths; its continuing displacement and disregard for the black human being; that law enforcers - sheriffs, district attorneys - are elected individuals rather than professional appointments; the disdain that successful women, especially successful black women are held in. What surprised me was that all this took place in New York state, and not in some red neck southern state where I would have expected such attitudes to be. Many of the themes and issues raised by the author in the story, we as outsiders in NZ see looking in on America - what is amazing is that Americans themselves don't seem to be able to see what a really terrible society they have created over the past couple of hundred years, and continue to live in.

Despite the serious tone of the book, and the sometimes preachy ramblings by Irv, this is a great story. The relationship between Irv and Sigrid is outstanding, each trying to outdo the other on the crime solving front with completely different methods, the characters are wonderful, all of them. There is real heart and depth to them, to their relationships with one another. Parts of it are hilarious - the dialogue and repartee, turn of phrase particularly from Irv. The only person I can possibly imagine playing him in a movie or TV series is Tommy Lee Jones, who may now be a bit old for the part, but has that perfect combination of all the Irv personality. I loved this, couldn't stop reading it. Just brilliant writing, and how on earth you can have humour in a story with so much tragedy and wrong things in it I don't know, but boy does it work.