‘Stef Penney's latest novel takes a multitude of twists and turns, written with a touch of humour that will leave you chuckling’

Dorset Echo

‘Nordic noir fans will enjoy this fascinating thriller . . . A perfect book-club read to spark lively discussion’

Woman & Home

‘A chilly Norwegian suspense that never loosens its grip’

Buzzmag

‘The Long Water is a crime novel inasmuch as there is a police investigation at its heart, also because it harks back to old, unpunished crimes, but it is happily far distant from the run of crime fiction today which is so often mere entertainment.

Here there are crimes which went unregarded at the time and which the law has never addressed; some are crimes against the spirit. Against this, the central narrative deals with the disappearance of a popular schoolboy during a summer school festival.

The setting is Norway, up beyond the Arctic Circle in what was once a mining town, now, with the mines closed, catering for tourists and holiday makers.

Part of the novel is told by an authoritarian voice, part given to the words and memoirs of an old woman, Svea, blighted almost from birth because she was

born during the wartime German occupation and her rather, whom she never knew, was a German soldier so that she was known and mistreated as "a Nazi brat”.

Now aged 79, she lives alone with her dog. Her mother whom she hated and her sisters are dead, and she is estranged from her daughter who has left her husband, a Lutheran Minister, but she is on good terms with her 16-year-old granddaughter, Elin, who has just decided she is gender fluid.

Svea is, by her own account, a sour old thing but her story, tracking back over her mostly unhappy life, is excellently done. She is a remarkable character. She is given a fine narrative voice; an authorial triumph.

During this festival week, a time of licence, four senior pupils, all popular, from good families, set off by night to the mountain that hangs over the township. Only three return. The missing boy, Daniel whose grandfather is one of Svea's very few friends, is charming and intelligent.

Even though his mother tells the police that he has been disturbed, and been taking anti-depressant pills, it is inconceivable that he could have vanished.

Has he been murdered by his friends? Surely not. Has he tried to explore one of the long-abandoned mine workings? It seems improbable. Has he merely left town? Who can tell.

Speculation is rife. In such a remote, self-enclosed place, everyone has secrets.

The police are careful. Their investigation seems thorough, but, in such a place, where everyone knows something of everyone else, but where all families have secrets, it's difficult work for the local police, all the more so

when another disconcerting discovery is made.

This is a highly engaging and accomplished novel, a fine piece of craftsmanship. Ignorant of Norwegian life, I can't tell whether her creation of this remote community rings true but it is undoubtedly wholly convincing. It may not be the "real Norway", then - though I suspect it is — but the storytelling is certainly compelling.

There is a rich cast of characters, well differentiated, and family relationships which ring both pleasingly and disturbingly true.

It is a novel that has both breadth and depth as it moves persuasively back and forward in time. It is also a picture of a country where old people struggle to come to terms with an often disturbing and painful past but where young people belong convincingly to a recognisable contemporary world.

Like the young everywhere they live on their phones, Elin communicating with her gay friend Benny by text even while they are being driven to school by one of their teachers. One of the finest features of this gripping and thoroughly enjoyable novel is the sympathy and understanding which Stef Penney offers her characters.

The Long Water is a novel in which there is no showing-off, no tricksiness, no cleverness - a traditional novel that, like all the best fiction invites both feeling and thought. There is both kindness and intelligence here too, and this is rare in fiction today.

Svea is a wonderful character, too, even if in real life you might not wish to spend long in her company - but this is of course true of many great characters in fiction.

This is a book you will surely return to for a second reading.’

Allan Massie, The Scotsman