The Lion's Mouth by Anne Holt reviewed by Julia Jones

This is the first Anne Holt novel that I have read and I am going back for more. Jo Nesbo is quoted describing Holt as 'the Godmother of modern Norwegian crime fiction' and judging only from identikit cover design – grey mist, loneliness, treacherous ice, snow-encrusted gun, red typeface to hint at fresh blood – readers could be forgiven for expecting another volume of semi-standardised Scandinavian noir.

The Lion's Mouth is not like that at all. It's set in the political heart of Oslo with scrupulous descriptions of politician's offices, newspaper offices and several individual homes. There's scarcely a frozen waste to be seen. Admittedly one dodgy character dies in an avalanche and another swims naked across a lake but the subliminal message of the book is that these are the aberrants, these people and their landscapes are where civilisation and common humanity is not. The meaningful heartbeat of life lies in the city.

There is a striking (and welcome) absence of gore in The Lion's Mouth. It's more a novel of detection than a thriller and has many of the characteristics of a locked room mystery. John Dickson Carr is referenced early on. There are clues – a lost pass, an absent shawl, a filched pillbox and a gun of strikingly unusual design. These are spaced very effectively through the novel keeping the sense of action going without the need for repeated violence. This is not, however, an arid read. Alibis are established without too much minutiae and some of the clues turn out not to matter after all – or rather they matter in the field of human personality and relationships, not criminal investigation.

The Lion's Mouth is a political novel and here Ann Holt writes with effortless authority. She is a lawyer who has worked for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, the Oslo Police Department and served as Minister of Justice for a few months before ill-health forced her to resign. The Lion's Mouth is written in collaboration with her former Secretary of State Berit Reiss-Andersen, granddaughter of the lyric poet Gunnar Reiss-Andersen and currently president of the Norwegian bar association and a member of the Nobel Committee. This is a novel with pedigree.

Yet once again it refuses to be pigeon-holed. 'A story of lies, intrigue and politics. The Lion's Mouth asks questions about those who hold power and how far they will go to use it.' This is press-a-button blurb writing, about as lazy as the cover design. Yes, there is a sleazy and credible political scandal involving procurement trade-offs with an East German pharmaceutical company and yes, there is one Government minister who is playing the media machine unscrupulously for personal gain but the central theme of the book is responsibility. Idealism even. These politicians are tired and human: they accept the system in which they work and know that this will involve compromise. The bottom line, however, is altruism, not self-seeking. This is not a Jeffrey Archer or a Michael Dobbs. Don't you understand, Ruth-Dorthe, that you are tasked with managing the health service on behalf of 'the Norwegian people'?

I loved this aspect of The Lion's Mouth and would recommend it as a truthful, un-sensational, insider's portrait of working life in government. The grotesque, muck-raking journalist Little Letvik is an additional treat. Her awfulness is completely believable in context but still does not overshadow the main presentation of people doing their jobs within the structure of the state.

The final surprise of The Lion's Mouth, however, is that it is about an individual tragedy, not a power-crazed intrigue. It is this recognition of humanity within the machine that makes sense of the quotation from Gunnar Reiss-Andersen that serves as a preface. 'It's no use being a qualified zoologist once you're inside the lions mouth.'

To understand that quote you have, of course, to read the book. Holt's series detective Hanne Wilhemsen comes closest to guessing the truth though it is not she who reveals it. For me Hanne Wilhemsen was one of the few characters who didn't entirely convince. She is currently living in California with her lover Cecilia and only returns to Oslo in a holiday capacity once she hears that the Prime Minister has been discovered, shot. Her former partner Billy T. – gigantic, farting, back-thumping father of four boys by four mothers – is the much more active investigator. It maybe that I would feel more involvement with Hanne if I had read her earlier cases – or it could be that her pre-eminence as The Series Detective was not fully intended and once again this book is being forced into a convention that it doesn't quite fit.

(this review was first published on The Bookbag site. The Lion's Mouth is available in both print and electronic format)

Death order by Jan Needle

Review by Bill Kirton

This is an astonishing book. It’s a carefully crafted, beautifully written novel but, as I read, I had to keep reminding myself of that fact because even its speculations seem so authentic, so well supported by evidence. In its pages we find actual historical figures, personages of the highest international stature, names sewn into European and World history, but they’re not handled as icons (ugh! I hate that word), respected statesmen, or even as the monsters their reputations made of some of them. No, they’re people, important maybe, but all with their motives, idiosyncrasies, agendas, and all part of the fabric of the story of one of the most mysterious events of World War II, the strange flight of Rudolf Hess  to Scotland in 1941. Or was it perhaps Alfred Horn?

The historical fact of the flight, its potential significance and its long aftermath make it ripe for conspiracy theorists. Hess was, after all, Hitler’s deputy and yet nothing seemed to come of the flight. He was shuffled away to prison, then transferred to Spandau in 1947 where he stayed, its only inmate from 1966 onwards, until his ‘suicide’ in 1987, when he was 93 years old. Everything about the Hess story poses question upon question and the refusal of the UK authorities to release the relevant documents serves only to multiply the suspicions that the truth has never been told. Jan Needle’s book is the closest I’ve come to seeing all the events in a context which makes sense of them. It also questions other ‘facts’ which have become part of the historical record and yet don’t bear close scrutiny. Some of the great myths and heroes of those awful days begin to look not only shabby but actually sinister.

But all this stress on the ‘real’ subject matter is in danger of making it sound like a dry, historical read. It’s not. Its sweep is indeed large, but its focus is tightly held by the groups of individuals whose decisions and actions are behind the whole adventure. Central to the narrative are two main figures. Bill Wiley is distrustful of his masters in the SIS. He’s a flawed individual, something of a womaniser with a sick wife and a young son whom he loves but whose very existence makes Bill vulnerable. It’s through that vulnerability that he comes to accept a part in an operation that will end in the ‘murder of a 93 year old man’.

Then there’s Edward Carrington, a clever linguist whose skills made him a target for the SIS during WWII. He was persuaded to join the organisation as a spy and it’s through his meetings, travels and actions that we gain access to the machinations of the political (and royal) classes at the time and the elaborate structures behind the Hess peace initiative.

Add to them the killers who actually strangled the old man, the politicians engaged in their own internal and external power struggles, and the gentle but brilliant evocation of the various periods during which the action takes place, and you have a complex, layered account of the macrocosm and microcosm of war and the politics behind it.

This is writing without stylistic flourishes and yet which has its own energy and relentlessness as it uncovers layer after layer of the intrigues which combine to activate the dramas. The author moves us smoothly between time frames, making the 1940s feel as dynamic and immediate as the present, and deliberately structuring his narratives to suggest the broader continuum of which the Hess incident is simply one manifestation. The reverberations of some of the past events continue to be felt and we need to deconstruct the foundations of some of the myths into which we’ve bought so trustingly. This is about some contemporary perceptions as well as about mid 19^th century history. In one of the reviews I read, the writer wondered where fiction ended and fact began. Part of Jan Needle’s point is that so many of what we accept as ‘facts’ are fictions. The ‘truth’ of this novel is very persuasive.