The Reindeer Hunters – Lars Mytting

 This, the second book of trilogy, takes up the story twenty-two years after the end of The Bell in the Lake. Kai Schweigaard is still the pastor at Butengen in rural Norway, and still tends the grave of Astrid Hekne, who died in Dresden giving birth to twin boys. Kai brought her body home for burial and her one surviving son, Jehans, home to his mother’s family.

Head of the family, Osvald Hekne, has kept Jehans at arm’s length, but Kai Schweigaard has compensated by nurturing the boy at least up to adolescence at which point Jehans went rogue. He now spends most of his days fishing and hunting with an old rifle.

Now, up in the hills, he shoots a fine buck reindeer, but the kill is disputed by another hunter. He is a well-heeled English gentleman, Victor Harrison, and the two men strike up an immediate mutual liking, they even speak each other’s language – Victor had a Norwegian nanny, and Jehans was schooled in English by Kai. Without animosity the two reindeer hunters examine the corpse to discover it was a simultaneous hit. They agree to share the spoils, Jehans taking a cash settlement, just enough to buy a better rifle.

A year later and Jehans and Victor bump into each other again in the hunting grounds. When Victor is injured, Jehans takes him back to Butengen to recover at the pastor’s house. When Kai sees Victor, it is like déjà vu. He is the double of Jehan’s deceased father.

As Jehans’ and Victor’s stories develop separately, their potential true relationship seeps into their, and Kai’s consciousness. Is it possible that Astrid secretly gave away the second twin, and he has now, unknowingly, found his way back to Butengen? Kai believes it without understanding how. Victor is in denial, unwilling to disown his English heritage and family pile. Jehans is just happy to have a soulmate.

In parallel, Kai continues to search for the legendary, long-lost Hekne weave – a seventeenth century tapestry that is reputed to foretell events. All this against a backdrop of World War I that affects Victor and the subsequent flu epidemic that threatens Jehans and his family.

It is as beautifully written as its predecessor and builds to a tense and satisfying climax. We get a hint of who will carry the tale forward into the concluding (yet to be published) volume. I cannot wait.