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Finished Ordeal by Jørn Lier Horst, 10th and latest in his William Wisting, Laid-Back Non-Drunkard Norwegian Crime Solver, mystery series. This one had an interesting look at how as the time passes, chances of being able to find the culprit for a crime diminishes due to things like phone records and CCTV data being deleted, and the effects that new leads and evidence can have on open cases, as well as cases that are considered open and shut by investigators who've already made up their minds.
After the excellence of the immediately preceding previous installments, this one was, quite frankly, a bit of a step down. There were what seemed like a few drastic off-screen character developments, with one of the recurring characters having a rather changed role which made their contribution in this novel seem somewhat contrived in order to get them back into the story to supply information in a new way without using their old connections, while being less co-operative than usual. (And there was what I felt was somewhat gratuitous melodrama about a situation that they find themselves in, although I suppose if one does go meddling, one can probably expect that sort of thing to happen, but you'd think they'd have learned their lesson about it the last few times around. And a bit of contrivance in having backup evidence become available as leverage, just in case opponents can't be convinced with the merits of the initial set.) And I admit, I kind of miss what their old role brought to enhance the story, but I'm interested in seeing where they go from here.
Medium recommend if you've been following and enjoying the series. While this is a quite solid installment with a perfectly good whodunnit in it*, it's also much more continuity-heavy than usual, and relies a lot upon character relationship stuff built in previous novels, which even the handy introductory recap at the beginning which brings you up to speed with the important developments in the previous novels probably wouldn't help with, and just didn't feel up to the same standard as the rest. So this one probably works best if you're already familiar with everyone and want to see more of their circumstances, in between another well-done mystery case that confronts challenges to having a fair justice system where the potentially guilty are brought in for the crimes they actually committed.
* However, I did manage to guess the exact motive for one of the crimes, and finger the culprit and how they were induced to do it. Since I'm usually absolutely terrible at solving these things, I can't help but consider this not so much a sign that my amateur sleuth skills are improving, as the author having failed somewhere with the plotting.
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