FINAL CURTAIN - Kjersti Scheen

FINAL CURTAIN is the first of Kjersti Scheen's books to be translated into English and is also the first in a series of books feating ex-actress turned private investigator Margaret Moss.

Margaret's had a go at quite a few things in her life and hasn't really been able to settle to anything much - being a PI at least means she is her own boss, and can quite comfortably do everything "Her Way". Living with her daughter Karen (she of the bright green hair and teenage passions), in an apartment in the same house as Margaret's elderly aunt, Margaret drives a beat old Renault and scrapes by financially doing the odd bit of survelliance.

Whilst she's gainfully employed following the wife of a banker, who is sure she's having an affair; an old friend from Margaret's acting days, and well known theatre actress Rakel disappears. Her family is worried and they ask Margaret to dig around and see if Rakel just has a new boyfriend or where she has gone.

It takes a while for anything much to happen in this book, during which time a fair amount of how Margaret thinks and reacts to everything is laid out. In the early parts of the book Margaret runs a real danger of just being plain annoying - she's a bit inclined to talk to herself and she's rushing around head long into all sorts of situations. After numerous bone jarring encounters with a group of young Neo-Nazi's; a fair amount of sneaking around on rail lines, in ditches and through overgrown gardens; Margaret does get to the bottom of what happened to Rakel.

Interesting book - Margaret's a bit of an energiser bunny, a disaster area on legs. There's a couple of serious oddities with the plot and it's a big messy, lot's of things happening type plot, but, despite all of the slight nagging doubts left at the end of the book, I'll be keeping an eye out for the second in the series.