Øvre Richter Frich

Øvre Richter Frich (24 March 1872 – 13 May 1945), full name Gjert Øvre Richter Frich, was a Norwegian reporter, newspaper editor and crime writer. He was one of the most popular writers of crime fiction in Norway during the interwar period.

Frich was born in Byneset in Sør-Trøndelag, as a son of parish priest David Christopher Frich and Emilie Christine Richter. He started studying law and later medicine, but did not complete his studies. While student he excelled as athlete, in boxing, wrestling and rowing. He moved to Kristiania in 1895, and married Olga Marie Hansen in 1897. They had three children. He then left family life, divorced, and married actress and boheme Ida Ajagela Basilier-Magelssen in 1907. Both Frich and his new wife was part of a colorful group of people at the Grand Café in Kristiania. He later spent twenty years travelling around the world, to exotic places like Spitsbergen and South America. He spent his last fifteen years in Sweden, and died in Södertälje in May 1945.

Frich was a reporter for Aftenposten from 1895 to 1910. As a reporter he covered the Ålesund Fire in 1904 and the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, and is, in retrospect, regarded as a renewer of the genre in Norway. He was editor-in-chief for Verdens Gang from 1910 to 1911, and edited Bergens Aftenblad from 1913 to 1914.

Frich made his literary debut in 1911 with the adventurous novel De knyttede næver, the first in a series of books about the hero, Jonas Fjeld. This book was a great success, and from 1913 Frich started travelling around the world, while he continued his writings. He wrote a total of about seventy books, including 21 novels about Jonas Fjeld's adventures. He also issued the documentary Boken om tobakk ("The Tobacco Book", 1934) and several books on wine in Norwegian and Swedish from 1929 to 1938.

His books were translated into nine different languages, and Frich sold at least two million copies of his books.