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American By Day: A Novel Kindle Edition
She knew it was a weird place. She’d heard the stories, seen the movies, read the books. But now police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård has to leave her native Norway and actually go there; to that land across the Atlantic where her missing brother is implicated in the mysterious death of a prominent African American academic—America.
Sigrid is plunged into a United States where race and identity, politics and promise, reverberate in every aspect of daily life. Working with—or, if necessary, against—the police, she must negotiate the local political minefields and navigate the backwoods of the Adirondacks to uncover the truth before events escalate further.
Refreshingly funny, slyly perceptive, American by Day is “a superb novel on all levels” (Times, UK).
“Ingenious. Humorous. Wonderful.”—Lee Child
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication dateApril 3, 2018
- File size5063 KB
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American by Day | The Girl in Green | How to Find Your Way in the Dark | Norwegian by Night | |
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Shortlisted for the 2019 CWA Gold Dagger “Sure Derek Miller's novels are smart and full of heart and savvy and hilarious, but even more than all of this, he's fun. He's as dedicated as any writer I know to the proposition that readers should enjoy themselves, should delight in the experience of life and language. If our hearts get broken along the way, so much the better.” —Richard Russo “Ingenious. Humorous. Wonderful.” —Lee Child "[An] outstanding crime novel...Leavened throughout with Miller’s wry reflections on Norway’s 'chronic sense of discontentment,' this incandescent exposé of European and American mores profoundly entertains and provokes disturbing questions about personal and societal values." —Publishers Weekly, Starred and Boxed Review "If Tocqueville had written a police thriller, it might look something like this engrossing and wryly humorous but also deeply serious work. [American by Day is] for fans of Miller and his previous works (e.g., The Girl in Green), which were deservedly acclaimed." —Library Journal, Starred Review "What lifts this well above average are the characters, notably Sigrid and Irv, and their relationship and discussions, ranging from the investigative process to the characteristics of their respective countries, as they determine to what extent they can work together to achieve their desired goals. Miller offers a slightly different spin on Scandinavia-set crime fiction, wrapping a thriller plot around the character-driven substance of literary fiction to produce a hybrid that is compelling from any angle." —Booklist, Starred Review "Like his acclaimed debut, Norwegian by Night (2013), Miller's highly enjoyable new book is a solid mystery wrapped up in musings about individuality and freedom, grief and sadness." —Kirkus Reviews "A superb novel on all levels...Miller is a classy satirist of American mores." —Marcel Berlins, The Times (UK) "Derek B. Miller writes the kind of crime fiction the world needs right now. Principled, but not afraid to get down and dirty—and shot through with some of the sharpest humour you're likely to find." —Joseph Knox, bestselling author of Sirens "Not to be missed...A subtle crime story peopled with beautifully drawn characters." —Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail (UK) "A witty and intelligent fish-out-of-water tale." —Sun (UK) "American By Day is a terrific book—a high-class thriller with a neat Norwegian twist. You won't forget Sigrid, an Oslo detective on a mission in upstate New York; her outsider's take on American society gives this page-turner a unique and compelling sensibility." —Erica Wagner, author of Seizure and others "What astonishes and impresses me about Miller's books—and American by Day is no exception—is how witty and entertaining they are in moments, and yet deeply resonant and meaningful as well. Whether tackling issues of war or race, Derek Miller goes to the heart of matters affecting how we as a civilization live." —Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield's Books —
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sigrid Ødegård’s hands rest on the unopened blue folder as she stares out the window of her office. The seal of the Politi is embossed on the front in gold, red and black, meaning that someone decided to break out the good stationery for this one. It displays no author or title but she knows what it contains and she is in no rush to read it. Only two short months ago, in June, the entire city of Oslo, Norway, was trimmed with lilacs. Sigrid’s father had once told her that the early summer flowers were her mother’s favorite, and when the season was at its peak in Hedmark, their farmhouse was filled with them: a bouquet in each bathroom, a vase on the kitchen table. Their errant petals, he said, would drift through the house after her family as they journeyed its hallways stirring them up and scattering them in their wake. This collective movement ?— ?this collective memory ?— ?however, was thirty-five years ago. Sigrid was five years old when Astrid died. Sigrid wonders, looking out over the park with its August sunbathers and running children, whether those memories are even hers. They might have been given to her by her father. And if the memories are not hers, are they less precious or, perhaps, more?
She turns her attention from the window to the blue folder.
This, she’s been informed, is the final report and verdict about the events last month that resulted in the shooting-deaths of four hostage-takers at a summer cabin near the Swedish border in the village of Glåmlia. She was the commanding officer and had made the decision to utilize the emergency response force ?— ?the Beredskapstroppen. Their assault killed three of the perpetrators. Sigrid, herself, killed the fourth.
Conscious of being watched through the glass by the prying eyes of her department, Sigrid flips open the cover but doesn’t read the words. She should have closed the blinds after she’d received the folder from the young cop who’d knocked on her door to deliver it. He was blond and looked worryingly pale despite it being late summer. She’d found his boyish face immediately annoying.
“Thanks,” she’d said, and started to close the office door.
“You’re welcome,” he’d said and then ?— ?oddly ?— ?extended his hand.
She couldn’t think of a reason why he’d do this but she shook it to make it go away.
He seemed pleased with this and walked off.
During the past month the internal affairs department has been studying the events leading to the shootings in accordance with standard procedure. The report was standard procedure, though, only in the sense of being formalized; it was hardly common. The last time a Norwegian cop had fatally shot anyone was two years ago, in 2006, and before that it had been?.?.?. forever. A decade? It simply didn’t happen in Norway. Violent crime was very low, murder rarely happened, and when it did it was usually between people who knew each other, and most often between lovers. The man was always to blame.
Their training, at the academy, had been focused on how to deescalate a situation and gain a measure of control over it rather than rush in and encounter it. This is not what happened last month.
It was still the right call, she thought; they had taken a man, woman and child hostage. Under her fingertips, though, was the institutional wisdom of her department on the same topic. It may, or may not, be the same as her own.
They had chosen to deliver the file to her today, on Friday. Without reading it she’d never know whether the decision was sadistic or gracious.
The summer house where the shootings took place was deep in the woods behind a small field. It was a little larger than a standard hytte. It was a place intended for serenity. A hunting lodge. An escape for lovers. A moment after she had sprung from the police car with her colleague Petter, a young man emerged from the cabin ?— ?a man she had never seen before ?— ?and he ran in her direction.
To her? Toward her? At her? He was in motion, that was all she understood. His motive was opaque. Her fear and his direction, however, were not.
As she watched him she’d half expected him to stop. People usually change their behavior when seeing a police officer. They drive more slowly. They become more aware of their actions. They drop the weapon. They raise their arms.
He kept running. She called for him to halt. He kept running.
She saw the carving knife in his hand immediately. It seemed less dangerous than it did incongruous. There they were, in that beautiful season when the natural world was at its most expansive; the moment Norwegians wait for and dream about all through the dark year so that its arrival is both blessed and wistful for being so short. And there he was, silently running toward her with a knife designed to slice meat.
If she’d delayed he’d have been on top of her. So she shot him. And then she shot him again.
“Screw it,” she mutters in her native language and starts reading the file.
His name was Burim and was from Kosovo, apparently. His family fled to Norway as refugees from the war in the 1990s. His father had died of health complications after being freed from a Serbian internment camp. The report attributes the death to malnutrition and damage to internal organs likely caused by beatings at the camp. Young Burim, fatherless, had fallen into the wrong crowd in Oslo as he failed to assimilate into Norwegian culture. His immigrant experience and his behavioral patterns in Norway ?— ?concluded a forensic psychologist ?— ?suggested immaturity rather than malice or ambition. That was who she had killed.
However, the report continued to explain that the legal findings about her own guilt or innocence in the matter were based on a study of the facts of the case, and the circumstances of the encounter between the assailant (him) and the officer on the scene (her). She reads about the events that were in part described through Petter’s own testimony as he had eyewitnessed the shooting from his side of the patrol car.
The report contains a narrative account of the shooting. To Sigrid it reads like historical fiction. It is a story about a woman with her own name but this fictional character is clearly not Sigrid herself because the author of this story wasn’t at the cabin when all this happened. There was no video and other than Petter no witnesses. How could anyone possibly know what she’d really been doing let alone thinking?
Sigrid flips to the next page and reads on.
On what basis does this bureaucratic reenactment draw its claims and attributions of cause and effect? Who is this writer who drew conclusions what happened at the moment Sigrid pulled the trigger on her weapon? And who is this forty-year-old Norwegian police officer named “Sigrid Ødegård” who shot the man and instead of rushing over to care for his wounds, ran instead to the eighty-two-year-old American man who had tumbled out of the cabin, his neck slashed with a knife?
The report does not mention the gentle and soft hand of the old man reaching up to touch her face, leaving his own fingerprints in blood on her cheek. It does not mention how she did not see those fingerprints until later that night when she returned to her own apartment in Grønland, alone, and looked in the mirror. Why was that not in the report if this writer knew her so well?
By page twelve it is clear that both Sigrid and her literary doppelgänger have both been exonerated.
Sigrid raises her eyes to see whether any of the junior staff are watching her with the file.
As none of them are looking at her it is clear that, moments earlier, all of them were.
She returns to the report, increasingly attentive to its fictions and assumptions; false premises and confident rhetoric.
And the more she reads past its bureaucratic surface and its misplaced certainty, the more Sigrid can sense a higher firmament of truth.
Product details
- ASIN : B073XC65TX
- Publisher : Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 3, 2018)
- Publication date : April 3, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 5063 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 351 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #149,449 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Derek B. Miller is an American novelist who worked in international affairs before turning to writing full-time. He is the author of six highly acclaimed novels: Norwegian by Night, The Girl in Green, American by Day, Radio Life, Quiet Time (an Audible Original) and How to Find Your Way in the Dark. His work been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award (twice), the Strand Magazine Critic's Award for Best First Novel, the American Bookseller's Association's Indie Choice Award, the Barry Award for Best First Novel, and the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery. Norwegian by Night won the CWA John Creasey Dagger Award for best first crime novel, an eDunnit Award and the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award. How to Find Your Way in the Dark was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and a New York Times best mystery of 2021.
His next novel is THE CURSE OF PIETRO HOUDINI, forthcoming from Avid Reader Press at Simon & Schuster in the U.S. and Transworld at Penguin Random House in the UK in January, 2024.
Miller is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (BA in Liberal Arts), Georgetown (MA in National Security Studies) and he earned his Ph.D. summa cum laude in international relations from The Graduate Institute in Geneva with post-graduate work at Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is currently connected to numerous peace and security research and policy centers in North America, Europe and Africa, and he worked with the United Nations for over a decade. He has lived abroad for over twenty-five years in Israel, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland, Norway and Spain.
Visit his website at: www.derekbmiller.com
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This book is without question the best book that I have read in 20 years. It is about Sigrid's search for Marcus and her relationship with Sheriff Irving but it is so much more. It is really about race and politics and religion and morality and being American and being Norwegian. It is brilliantly written and so deep that I am 100% sure that I will re-read it within a month just to get all of the stuff that I missed the first time.
This is not a book for someone looking for a light beach read. This is a book you read in a book club and discuss the hell out of it so that you learn all of the stuff that you missed. It is a book which rips apart America, the greed, the racism, the politics, the stupidity of the media, all of it. But it always comes down to relationships and people and if they are good and smart, and written well, they are the sun and the moon.
This is one great great great book. I really look forward to reading it again.
First, Miller’s characters are the best ones that I have encountered for a very long time. I really liked Sigrid, but the Sheriff in this novel is someone I truly wish I could meet, even date! Miller’s characters are vastly complex and so affable.
Second, his books contain so much to think about. This novel tackles the topic of racism. A young black boy is shot by the police while carrying a toy gun. Shortly thereafter, the boy’s aunt is found dead at the bottom of a tall building. Is it murder or suicide? Ike, the Sheriff, becomes the kind of cop I wish were handling all these kinds of cases. Miller himself must be an incredibly wise person to tackle this topic in such a sensitive fashion.
Overall, this book is a beautifully written novel with endearing characters, a riveting plot, and so much more. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes books that make them think. You won’t be disappointed! I would have given it 5 stars but I only give 5 to books that I think are going to become true classics, is, Memoirs of a Geisha. I give his books 4.5 stars!
Derek B. Miller is a smart and funny guy. I loved Norwegian by Night, and was thrilled to find its counterpart, American by Day, had been published. In this story, police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård travels to the U.S. to save her brother from himself, and a bunch of trigger-happy law enforcement people. This book has it all: humor, wit, cynical truth about human nature, great descriptions, love, race, violence (implied if not depicted), peace-making, feminism, mentoring, grief, tragedy...and a happy ending. The author's background informs his writing. His bio says, "Derek B. Miller has worked on international peace and security for think tanks, diplomatic missions, and the United Nations...." He is an American who lives in Norway, so he knows both cultures. He's a fine writer.
I especially enjoy how smart his good guys are. In this book, Sigrid is a low-key, kickass pragmatist, who also sometimes fails completely.
I was heartsick over the depictions of what it can feel like to be a black person in America. And I am heartsick to think there are no answers, except, as the Sheriff says, to talk to each other. To know each other. To be human with each other. But it's so little, and so late.
The only negative about the writing in this book is that, as with the stellar Norwegian by Night, some of the dialogue (internal or spoken) goes on too, too long. But I don't care. The book is fantastic.
“….angry people, people who shout at you and accuse you and vilify you, often do it to try and change you. Which means they think it’s possible. Which means they have faith in you. Which means they can imagine the New Jerusalem. And to avoid that, to walk away from that, is to turn your back on the Kingdom of God.”
This in a detective story, a follow-on to the life of the Norwegian policewoman in Norwegian by Night. This book doesn't have the same odd twists of the earlier book, but is subtle, insightful, and includes the perspective of an author who appears to understand two very different cultures: that of America and of Norway, his home country.
As well as strong characters, the plot is as twisted as life, leading us into subplots of racial tension, of violence, of policing. All of these are twists which lead the reader to thoughtful reflection. They are places of high controversy and difference.
It is a good book. I looked forward to this book by the author, and now, look forward to what he has for us next time.
Top reviews from other countries
Very well written, Interesting plot, realistic and funny dialogue.
It's worth reading for the mystery story and also for its comments on a variety of issues such as race, gun control, policing and more from an outsider perspective.
Highly recommended.
I've already ordered other books of the author.
The storyline is based in Norway and the USA. Sigrid, a chief of police, is asked to find her brother, Marcus, who has gone missing in America. In America, Sigrid meets up with the local sheriff, Irv Wiley. Irv is investigating the death of a Dr Lydia Jones and Marcus is connected to the investigation. The death of Lydia has connotations of racism. What becomes apparent are the differences in the police procedures and the general attitudes between the two cultures.
This has just the right amount of humour. There’s no extreme violence. The two main characters, Sigrid and Irv would make a great partnership for a series. Definitely recommended. I’ll be looking out for another book by this author.