Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Norwegian by David Smith

This is billed as being the collected fiction featuring a character known as ‘the Red Handler’, a private detective, by the (fictional) author, Frode Brandeggen (1970-2014). Just over 150 pages are taken up by the fifteen Red Handler novels, with another hundred or so devoted to endnotes.
The novels are of course, extremely short.

Brandeggen himself seems something of a character; his previous work included his debut novel, Conglomerativ Breath, which at 2322 pages was branded as being ‘completely unreadable’ by critics. His first draft of the Red Handler ran to 450 pages, before he made a radical decision to go to the other extreme, and keep it short.

This is not the usual type of crime fiction. Bruno Aigner, a friend to whom the book is dedicated, writes Brandeggen consciously chose to break with the established rules of the detective story… The solution comes before the reader has a chance to get bored.
There’s a variety of plots, varying from murder to theft to public ruination. It’s an interesting parody of detective fiction, of which there are a fair few, but nothing quite like this.

As much as poking fun at the genre, as a sort of literary game, Harstad gives the reader a degree of paranoia as well, is it them that piss is being taken out of?

My GoodReads score 3 / 5