Kjetil Østli’s Politi og røver (Cops and robbers) has sold 40 000 copies in Norway, and won the prestigious Brage-award for the best nonfiction-book 2009. Cops and robbers is a brilliantly well-written “true crime”, and at the same time an investigation of crime and the male role.

Cops and Robbers gives a unique insight into the criminal world, which is hidden from people in general. We meet a man who blew up cash machines, drove cars straight into shops in order to rob them and who was accused of the famous Munch-painting robbery. And we meet the police man who spied him. Over a period of three years author Kjetil Østli met these two men who find themselves at each their side of the law.

By following the cop and the robber Østli shows how crime has toughened up the past twenty years. He also tries to find answers to questions about why someone ends up as professional criminal. Why does Petter R. Hansen, who used to do so well in school and with respectable parents, turn into a criminal? How does the tiny, skinny and insecure village boy transform into the muscular and respected super undercover cop Johnny Brenna?
Another story also grew out of the work with this book. It is about manhood. The robber and the cop share the same male role model, and regard the author a frail academic. What does it mean to be a man today?

Kjetil Østli (1975) is a journalist with the weekly magazine A-magasinet. He has received both the Arne Hestnes Prize and NTB’s Language Award, and has been hunted by Norwegian publishers for many years. With Cops and Robbers Kjetil Østli finally makes his début. Now this has earned him another prize; the prestigious Brage Award.

“Cops and Robbers is elegant crime history, fine up close and personal portraits, and a self-revealing search for the real man in the author. […] All carried out with a much better literary nose than most non-fiction writers can perform on their best days.”
-Dagsavisen

”With a sure sense of dramaturgy, crafty language, psychological vision and fresh literary parallel stories Kjetil S. Østli has created a brilliant documentary which is both touching and engaging.”
-Dagbladet

”There are several reasons why this book surpasses most of crime fiction and literature about crime. […] By focusing on people, not actions, the book gets an additional dimension which deals with being a man in Norway. This is mainly obtained with Østli’s own participation in the text, fascinated and headshaking. He is an ironic citizen visiting a foreign landscape, a comical contrast to the adrenalin junkies he interviews.”
-Aftenposten.

“In Cops and Robbers Østli shows yet again that he is a splendid observer, with a hungry eye for the describing, and the absurd details and the authentic lines.”
-Dagens Næringsliv