The Last Fix

KO Dahl

KATRINE BRATTERUD’S been through it all – foster home, prostitution, drug abuse – and she’s still only in her 20s.

Despite the squalor of her existence up to now, she has retained her striking beauty and is heart-breakingly determined to make something of her life.

Held up as a success by the organisers of her drug rehabilitation programme, she’s found a boyfriend and a steady job in a travel agency. Life, it seems is looking up.

Then one day a thug walks into the travel agency and viciously attacks her. That same evening, a man makes a squalid pass at her during a party celebrating her success in the programme and her boyfriend makes eyes at another woman.

Disgusted, she leaves party and boyfriend behind, and visits the local lake with a friend and sometime lover. As Katrine walks along the lakeshore while her friend snoozes in the car, she suddenly senses she is not alone. In the dim, foggy, early morning light, she sees a naked man approaching from out of the woods… The discovery of Katrine’s corpse the following day puts the police on the scent of a trail backwards through generations and into a world of secrets and lies. Katrine’s turbulent past makes her easy prey to a series of men who immediately become suspects – and victims of the killer’s rage.

This is an intricate plot, which juxtaposes the often bizarre self-delusions of “““““““““““drug addicts with the more complex, and, in a way, even more peculiar self-delusions of the well-respected pillars of society who treat them.

Dahl manages to merge the suspect of a classic whodunit with piercing social commentary about the hypocrisy and contempt which can lurk beneath even the most well-intentioned social programmes.

Definitely worth a try.