American by Day

Can't remember where I heard about this book but I am glad I read it. This is a sequel to Derek B. Miller's Norwegian by Night, a Dagger Award winner eventually published in a dozen languages, featuring the same protagonist, Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård of the Oslo police. Miller is American, but married to a Norwegian woman and they live in Oslo. He has a rather impressive academic and real world resume including a PhD in international relations from the University of Geneva.
Sigrid has recently been involved in shooting a man to death and, although the shooting was ruled as justified, it has left her questioning herself. She takes leave to visit her father and finds out from him that her brother, Marcus, who has lived in the United States for 20 years, has gone missing. Moreover, Sigrid's father, has already bought her a plane ticket to go to the U. S. to find him.  So she does. But in some ways that is the least of the story, for this is a look at America from a European point of view, in particular our culture around guns and individualism and race. The characters are fascinating,  provocative, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. It seems like an odd combination of philosophy, humor, mystery, and literary fiction...but it works.
It's 2008 in the run-up to the Obama-McCain presidential election. Set in sultry late summer upstate New York, which as Sigrid dryly observes is still south of Venice, Sigrid has her suitcase stolen within minutes of arriving at her brother's empty house, which is now occupied by a prostitute who claims Marcus gave her the keys when he left. Sigrid teams up with local sheriff Irv Wylie, and his deputies, especially Melinda, who comes to look at Sigrid as a sort of mentor. Wylie has a master's degree in divinity so takes a somewhat different perspective on law enforcement and the world than your run-of-the-mill small-town sheriff. Marcus' disappearance coincides with the death of the woman he was dating, Lydia, an African American professor at the same small university where Marcus was working as an adjunct. Marcus made the 9-1-1 call and was there when Lydia fell to her death from the 6th floor of an office building still under construction, so he is suspect #1.  Wylie is having to tread very carefully because the Black community is up in arms about the police shooting of a 12-year-old Black boy--Lydia's nephew-- and the powers that be want this case solved quickly and seem less concerned about whether they get the right culprit. Needless to say, Sigrid feels she needs to reach Marcus before the police do if he is to have any chance of staying alive.
Not only was I impressed with the craft, the perspective, and the characters, but I also admire how Miller seemed able to cross the gender gap and authentically present a woman's point of view. I will definitely go back and read Norwegian by Night and maybe The Girl in Green as well. Reviews for this book from The Guardian, the New York Journal of Books, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.