Review: Randy Fuglehaug, «Tonedød» – Kill the Rough System

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The dramatic opening of “Tonedød” has striking similarities to Randy Vogelhaug’s first book in the series about Bridget Jones-like journalist Agnes Tveit. Fallesjuke (2020) also opened in spectacular fashion in Voss, with a paratrooper dying on the ground and half of Voss being onlookers.

A year has passed now. Agnes quit her job as a journalist, and made a certain run with the book “The Fall,” which was about the parachute murder. She is now working on a commissioned autobiography of Marta Tverberg. When Marta is murdered, a busy Agnes begins her own investigation, putting her in danger of death.

Smarter and smarter

In addition to the criminal debut “Valsjok”, former Dagblad journalist Randy Vogelhög has had a huge success with the “Halve kongeriket” youth book series, co-written with Ann-John Halvorsen. With its innocent domestic colour, there are aspects of Voss’ crime that are reminiscent of Camilla Lackberg’s Fjällbacka series. But Fuglehaug is a much tougher and smarter writer. In elegant fashion, Agnes is left spinning the victim’s life.

Candid, repetitive, and superficial

It turns out that many had the motive to kill the bitter and perhaps insidious older singer – famous in the rest of the world, but hated in his hometown. The species gallery is diverse and straightforward, with many potential suspects. Among other things, a criminal couple and their suspicious and unsympathetic parents. Agnes herself gets help from her family, her best friend, policeman Victor, and her best friend Ingeborg, a hotel manager and single mother.

sarcastic privacy

Agnes believes that “modern jazz—or, fear and horror, free jazz—was either frantic, incoherent, immersive music that caused impulses of tension and rage in her brain, or the endless, directive solos on which she had so much difficulty not falling asleep” Then you sit in the hall and listen to the Verberg concert. This is a book style, elegant and humorous, bloodthirsty and fast.

Agnes herself has a peculiarity on the frontiers of parody. She lives a miserable love life after breaking up with her very idealistic medical partner in the previous book. She never exercises and has a penchant for fatty foods – here we may have been excused from some recipes. She is curious, rude, energetic, and has a tendency to sleep with men she shouldn’t.

This must be successful

In the previous book, her private life became dominant, and the intrigues themselves flowed, on the verge of gossip. “Death tone” is more compact and uniform. It’ll also be exciting over time, with a dramatic, elegant and surprising finish.