The Human Flies

Locked-room mysteries used to be a staple of golden-age crime fiction. Now the Norwegian novelist Hans Olav Lahlum has revived the form in The Human Flies translated by Kari Dickson. The novel is set in 1968, when a young detective inspector - Kolbjorn Kristiansen, known as K2 - is sent to an apartment block in Oslo to investigate the murder of a Resistance hero. The victim has been shot in his flat but there is no sign of the weapon and the front door appears to be locked from the inside. It is the start of a brilliant investigation in which K2 is secretly assisted by an enigmatic young woman who is confined to a wheelchair.