Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sheldon Horowitz has outlived everyone he's known, except his granddaughter, Rhea, who fears he suffers from dementia and convinces him to move from Manhattan to Oslo, where she lives with her Norwegian husband. So the 82-year-old finds himself in a strange land, bemused by placid, orderly Norwegians. When a young woman is murdered in his apartment building, Sheldon shelters her young son and sets out to find a refuge for him. But the killer is a brutal Kosovar war criminal, and Sheldon must rely on his Korean War scout-sniper training to evade the killer. No brief plot outline can do justice to a book that deserves to find a place on a few best-of-the-year lists. Sheldon is a brilliantly imagined character, a true mensch, made of Greatest Generation stuff. His wife and Rhea believed he was a mere file clerk, not a wounded combat hero. Only his son, who died in Vietnam following Sheldon's example, knew the real story, and Sheldon dreams nightly of being on patrol in Vietnam with him. Miller keeps the reader guessing about Sheldon's dementia. Might he simply be an old man appropriately focused on past and present rather than the future? Oslo police inspector Sigrid Odegard, hunting the killer, is another wonderful creation, and her phone conversations with her farmer father are often wry, archetypally Scandinavian debates. Miller joins the ranks of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, and Jo Nesbo, the holy trinity of Scandinavian crime novelists. Norwegian by Night is very different than their work but equally satisfying.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Miller's first novel features an unlikely hero, Sheldon Horowitz, an 82-year-old widower suffering from dementia. Haunted by his Korean War experiences and his son's death in Vietnam, Sheldon has moved to Norway to live with his granddaughter and her husband. On hearing a violent argument outside his family's Oslo apartment, Sheldon opens his door to a Slavic-looking woman and her small son to offer them refuge from an assailant. The assailant kills the mother, but Sheldon manages to protect the boy. While Sheldon tries to keep the child safe, the police investigate the murder. Moments of humor, such as the time Sheldon bluffs his way into a fancy hotel room, enliven the narrative, but Sheldon's philosophical musings can wear (e.g., "Sanity is the thick soup of distraction that we immerse ourselves in to keep from remembering that we're gonna bite it"). This works better as a study in character than a crime novel. Agent: Rebecca Carter, Janklow & Nesbit. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Sheldon Horowitz is 82 years old and sliding into dementia, one symptom of which is that he talks to the dead. His granddaughter is concerned; Sheldon lives in Oslo with her and her husband because he can no longer care for himself unaided. One day the man witnesses a horrific murder outside the front door of their flat. He runs off with a small boy to save him from the killer, a Kosovo war criminal. Pursued by both the killer and the police, Sheldon revives his military skills from his sniper days during the Korean War. VERDICT In this fiction debut, Miller (senior fellow, UN Institute for Disarmament Research) has written both an exciting chase thriller and a poignant story about a man who comes into his own again in his dotage. The book occasionally verges on schmaltz, but it's bigger and better than this minor failing. The many admirers of Scandinavian crime novels will enjoy this big-hearted first novel, which embeds social commentary although it doesn't wear its political persuasions on its sleeve.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Miller's affecting debut, about a cantankerous Jewish widower transplanted to Norway who becomes party to a hate crime, is an unusual hybrid: part memory novel, part police procedural, part sociopolitical tract and part existential meditation. Native New Yorker Sheldon "Donny" Horowitz, 82, is a retired watch repairman living in Oslo with his granddaughter Rhea, an architect, and her new Norwegian husband, Lars. She thinks her grandfather is slipping into dementia. Haunted by his experiences as a Marine sniper in the Korean War and by his son Saul's death in Vietnam, Sheldon sometimes has trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. He thinks the Koreans are still after him. But he is more strong-willed, decisive and wily than his granddaughter thinks. When a stranger murders the immigrant woman who lives upstairs, Sheldon shelters and then escapes with her young son, fearing the boy is in danger, too. On the run with the boy, who doesn't speak English, the old man deftly talks his way into a pricey Oslo hotel, gives the boy a makeover to disguise him, steals a boat and heads to Rhea's summer home. In close pursuit are the killer, an Albanian war criminal whose rape of the woman led to the birth of her son, and tough-minded Chief Inspector Sigrid degrd, a staunch opponent of her country's open-door policy. The novel's stylistic moving parts don't always mesh: The patter between Sigrid and her wisecracking partner, Petter, would be better suited to another novel. But Sheldon, who has never forgiven himself for encouraging his son to go to war like him, boasts an abrasive wit. And Miller, an American living in Oslo (he directs The Policy Lab, an international research group), makes the setting a powerful character as well. Hovering over the narrative is Norway's roundup of its Jewish population during the Nazi occupation--for which, the author points out, the nation didn't formally apologize until 2012. This novel, first published in Norway, was worth the wait.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
