The Nature of Things

Shakespeare's Macbeth is his shortest tragedy and one of his shortest plays. Jo  Nesbø's Macbeth, which is the latest in the Hobarth Shakespeare project in which modern writers are invited to reimagine one of the bard's works, goes on and on and on for nearing 500 pages of dense prose. It took me a full week of reading whenever I had the opportunity to finish it. Admittedly, I was occupied with other things as well, but still. But the description of the book as 500 pages of dense prose is not meant to imply that it is in any way boring or not worth the trouble. In fact, it is a bit of a page turner in the  Nesbø tradition of tightly plotted thrillers, but it is not an easy read. Nesbø sets his reimagining of the classic in 1970s Scotland in a city that is never actually named but a couple of the reviews that I've read have inferred that it is Glasgow based on the description and the evidence presented. Apparently, Glasgow in that period was a pretty grim place fighting...

The Leopard by Jo Nesbø My rating: 2 of 5 stars Jo Nesbo is a trickster. He delights in providing false clues and leading his readers down long winding paths and into the weeds. One can almost see him rubbing his hands together and chortling with glee when the reader realizes he/she has been fooled once again. The landscape of a Nesbo novel is littered not so much with red herrings as with red whales and the stench of those decaying red whales becomes pervasive by the time one has read halfway through the book. Well, this is the eighth book that I have read in the Harry Hole series and, by now, I am on to Nesbo's tricks and not so easily fooled. I know, for example, that when Harry thinks he has the murders solved by the middle of the book, and again at the two-thirds mark, it's going to turn out to be the wrong - or an incomplete - solution. After a while, all those false clues and misdirection become seriously annoying. The reader feels as though the author is straining to ...

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø My rating: 4 of 5 stars Early on in The Snowman , a man comes to Inspector Harry Hole's apartment claiming that he is inspecting the building and treating it for mold. He tells Harry that the inspection and the treatment may take several days during which he will need access to the apartment. Harry is on his way out the door to go to work and does he question the man - except to ask for how much it will cost - or ask for any identification or verification that he is legitimate? Nope! He simply hands over his spare door key and leaves for work. The reader thinks, "Is this really the action of Oslo's best detective?" And her second thought is, "Oh, Harry, this isn't going to end well!" Meanwhile, at work, Harry's team has gained a new member, Katrine Bratt, who seems like a feminine version of Harry. The team needs all the help it can get because very bad things are happening in Oslo. Women are disappearing, often without a tra...

Cockroaches: The Second Inspector Harry Hole Novel by Jo Nesbø My rating: 2 of 5 stars It seems that Harry Hole has become the go-to guy when Norwegian authorities need to send someone abroad in connection with a criminal investigation. That strategy turned out well when Harry was sent to Australia to help track down the killer of a Norwegian citizen there in The Bat . Now, another Norwegian has been killed abroad, this time in Thailand, but it's not just any Norwegian. It is Norway's ambassador to Thailand. There may be political implications to this killing and the authorities are anxious that the whole thing be handled discretely. In other words, they want it hushed up. But is Harry really a likely candidate to accomplish that?  The powers that be seem to think so and soon he is winging his way to Bangkok. The ambassador had been found in a hotel room that was an extension of a local brothel, with a ceremonial knife sticking out of his back. The implication is that he was w...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was actually the novel that introduced Harry Hole to the reading world. Unfortunately for those of us who read English, it was not translated for us until 2013. This was after I had read four of Jo Nesbø's later books in this series that, for some reason, had been translated earlier. So I had to read The Bat out of sequence - not my favorite way of experiencing a series. It was interesting though, having read the later books, to go back and see the beginning, to meet the younger Harry and to learn more about his troubled background and particularly how alcohol came to rule his life at times. This is a very different Harry Hole novel from the others I've read because we find our Norwegian detective in the exotic (for him) setting of Australia, where he has been sent to be the liaison for the investigation of the brutal rape and murder of a Norwegian national in Sydney. There, he finds himself partnered with an Aboriginal detective in the Sydney poli...

My rating: 4 of 5 stars Jo Nesbø is a master of misdirecting attention. He had me thoroughly confused about the true source of the sense of evil that pervades The Redeemer. It was with some surprise that I learned just how wrong I had been. The book begins with the brutal rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Salvation Army summer camp. It is a crime, like all too many rapes, that is never reported but one that will reverberate throughout the novel. A dozen or so years later, in modern day Oslo, Inspector Harry Hole's life is more or less back on track after he fell off the wagon and went off the deep end a year ago. His lover Rakel kicked him out after that episode because she didn't want a drunk to be a part of her son Oleg's life. Oleg, however, loves Harry and is determined to keep him in his life and it seems that Harry has worked out a relationship with them. On the job, things are changing. Harry's friend, protector, and boss at the Oslo PD is leaving. The new adminis...

My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book did not begin promisingly for me. After being given the leeway to investigate the death of his friend and partner Ellen, Detective Harry Hole has spent months following leads and his intuition. He has become certain in his own mind that the man behind Ellen's murder as well as the burgeoning illegal arms trade in Norway is Inspector Tom Waaler, his colleague on the Oslo police force. He has even found one witness who is able to confirm at least part of his suspicions - a witness who promises to testify. But when the time comes for Harry to present his story to his boss, the witness refuses to speak. Harry is left hanging with an incredible story and practically nothing to back it up. The fact that it is the truth counts for naught. As The Devil's Star begins, he has reached the end of that process. Completely frustrated by his inability to prove his case against Waaler, Harry has been driven to drink again - literally. He has fallen off the wa...

My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read a lot of mysteries and so one might think that I would have developed some expertise in picking up clues over the years. But, in fact, I've only recently noticed that nearly all of the fictional detectives that I read about are recovering from or battling some addiction. Booze, pills, hard drugs, you name it - if it's addictive there must be a fictional detective out there who is suffering from it and that usually also results in dysfunctional personal relationships. Rare indeed is the normal, average, middle-class detective with no dark side and a normal, average, loving family and normal productive relationships. DCI Tom Barnaby of Midsomer Murders is the only one who springs immediately to mind. I suppose this is a device to humanize the character and make the reader feel more sympathetic toward him or her. And, of course, when it's done well, it does work that way. Millions of fans of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus can attest to that. I...

I was 19 percent of the way through reading this novel on my Kindle when I realized that I had no idea what was going on. It was a story that switched back and forth between the war years of the 1940s and the rise of neo-fascism in Norway in 1999. Was it all connected somehow? It seemed clear that Jo Nesbø intended that, but it was just hard for me to see.  I know people who would have given up reading the book at that point, but I am made of sterner stuff! I was determined to see what all the shouting and praise for Nesbø was all about. I'm glad I persevered. Shortly after scratching my head in confusion at the 19 percent mark, the story actually started to make sense to me and I was able to begin to see the connections between the various characters and their story lines. We meet Daniel, a young Norwegian soldier in 1944, fighting alongside the Germans against the Russians. He is a legendary sharpshooter. But then he is supposedly killed. Later, a wounded Norwegian soldier wakes ...