He is a major figure in the Nordic noir crime fiction genre through his 19 novels featuring Varg Veum, a private detective in Bergen on the rainy west coast of Norway.

[7] A bookworm from childhood, he credits his initial interest in crime fiction to reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books as a teenager.

[9] Veum was particularly influenced by Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer and Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.

Staalesen was also inspired by the juxtaposition of crime fiction and social realism in the Martin Beck series published from 1965 to 1976 by Swedish writers Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.

[9] Veum’s physical appearance is almost never mentioned in the books, but Staalesen chose the character’s name to emphasize the private eye’s lone wolf status in society.