Sven Elvestad (1885–1934)

I received a complementary copy of Through Three Rooms through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program; my review is voluntary.

Through Three Rooms is a quick and easy read, yet I feel a bit conflicted about how to assess it. The introduction, while lengthy (especially in comparison to the book itself), provides solid historical context for the book. It only becomes clear later why that’s important. Protagonist detective Asbørn Krag and the structure of his mystery story bear uncanny similarities to those of Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes—but Krag came first by decades, so it’s not at all derivative. This in itself I found intriguing.

The setup of the story was equally intriguing—a troubled old man in a living situation that seems downright chilling. Then a crime occurs that must be solved, new characters emerge, and our hero detective knows immediately what happened and why.

This is where the story lost me, and I don’t know if something was lost in translation or if it was written vaguely on purpose. Krag solves the crime based on such a random assumption of a back story that I found myself going back in the book to see if I had missed something when I had been struggling to stay awake during parts of it. But no, it came out of nowhere. And the reason for the strange setup of the aforementioned old man’s living quarters is a massive letdown. (I’m being vague so as to avoid spoilers.)

The book feels like an unfulfilled promise. It’s not poorly written but the story builds up just to flop at the end. Kind of frustrating.… (mehr)

I'd never heard of this Norwegian detective novelist or his somewhat Holmesian hero prior to seeing this book listed in Early Reviewers, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The introduction to the Kabaty Press edition helpfully clarifies the place of the author in Norwegian fiction of the time, and the translation reads clearly enough, no more awkward than some English-language detective stories of its era. I can't say that I found the characters or plot especially compelling, but the story was adequate for its brevity and, while not exactly "fair," didn't seem wholly implausible. Though I wouldn't consider it a must-read, I'd recommend the story as an option for readers interested in early detective fiction, particularly beyond the Anglophone context.… (mehr)