I was really looking forward to reading this book because I liked Norwegian by Night so much. This book is not as good but is well worth the read for some different reasons.

Derek Miller is an American who now lives with his family in Norway. He has a PhD in International Relations and uses that in his day job. His fourth book will be out this year.

In Norwegian, the 84 year old Sheldon Horowitz has been moved from his home in New York to live with his granddaughter and her Norwegian husband. He rescues a boy from a gang of Balkans who kill the boy’s mother.

Horowitz was a sniper in Korea. Now he has to use his skills to travel across a country he does not know without money and without being able to talk to the boy. Why? Because the Balkans want to kill the boy as well. Horowitz succeeds but dies in the arms of Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård.

In American by Day, Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård is sent to upstate New York by her father to find her brother who has gone missing. Much of the same whimsical humor laces this book, but Miller did spend more time pointing out that America has a race problem, and we eat fattening food.

She arrives in time to learn that her brother has confessed to killing his girlfriend, a black professor, and then disappeared. She is forced to cooperate with Sheriff Irving Wylie, owner of a master’s degree in theology to find Marcus before the police find him and shoot him.

Even with the preaching, this is a good read, much better by far than Stasi Vice.

Mike Lawrence