At Night All Wolves Are Grey

"I read that book as a student in Bergen in the 80s. Gunnar Staalesen is a crime writer of the Chandler school. He was a sort of Norwegian Chandler who wrote from Bergen and based many of his novels there. And it was a guide book into the Bergen mentality and the city of Bergen. Bergen isn’t the biggest city in the Norway but it is the most urban. It has connections with the rest of Europe, places like Germany and also England. So it’s very small but still an international city on the west coast of Norway. People from there say they are not a Norwegian city; they feel they have their own identity. It is a charismatic city which they are proud of. So they are both funny and snobbish about their city at the same time. The centre of Bergen is so small that I was always coming across streets or places that were in the book, and that was fun. It was like you almost couldn’t avoid the crime scenes in his books. Not really. But these books are huge – they have been translated into 12 languages and now there is a TV series."