A riotous metafictional dissection of a “famous” Norwegian detective writer
Frode Brandeggen (1970-2014), an unknown voice to most readers, made his debut in 1992
with the experimental 2,000+ page novel Conglomerate Breath. It was never reviewed and soon
forgotten. After that, he created a new genre, writing fifteen micro-novels about “Red Handler,” a
protest-oriented crime fiction project aimed at confronting the genre’s weakness–and often
unnecessary length.
As his weapon, he developed a private investigator who is already at the
scene or in the immediate vicinity when foul play takes place, so that the perp can be caught red
handed and the case quickly solved, thus offering crime fiction to people who don’t have the
time to read long books, or who simply hate to read, but love crime.
This book brings together all fifteen micro-novels Brandeggen wrote about Red
Handler for the first time, and is also equipped with a comprehensive amount of enthusiastic, explanatory,
complementary, and sometimes strangely digressive endnotes, written in the pen of Brandeggen’s
closest literary confidant in the final years, German professional annotator Bruno Aigner (1934-).
This novel about the fiction Red Handler, Frode Brandeggen, and Bruno Aigner is Johan Harstad’s wildest, most hysterical project to date.
