Category Archives: Jo Nesbø

Review: THE BAT by Jo Nesbø

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TheBatNesboAudioThe latest of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels to be translated into English is the first one ever released in Norwegian, back in the late 90′s. At least for me this is one of the few occasions where I think translating out of order was probably the right decision. Even setting aside the fact I didn’t find it a great book I don’t think it’s a particularly good representation of what the series would eventually become and with it being set outside Norway, a strange choice for a first book in a series, it wouldn’t exactly have fitted in with the rest of the ‘cold Scandi crime’. Personally I doubt I’ve bothered reading any more if this had been my first exposure to the Nesbø/Hole phenomenon.

The book sees Harry Hole, a disgraced Norwegian policeman, sent to Australia to be a kind of liaison as Sydney police investigate the death of a Norwegian girl. It is a sort of test to see if Harry can be fully trusted again. But, as those who have read any of Harry’s later adventures might expect, the path to even a semblance of redemption is a bumpy one to say the least. As far as providing many of the details which explain why Harry is the way he is in later novels THE BAT does a good job and the last third of the book was a reasonably fast-paced kind of yarn. The rest of the book didn’t really do it for me.

Most of the reason is length. The book rambles, endlessly, and often in a terribly earnest, almost preachy kind of way. I am always annoyed at being preached at but I am particularly peeved when preached at about complex issues such as my country’s handling of indigenous issues by someone who spent 5 weeks here before writing a book. In his trek along the east coast of Australia Harry meets an assortment of fringe-dwellers …Aboriginal boxing troop members, transvestite clowns, junkie cops, sky-diving homeless people, kind-hearted prostitutes and the like…who are all, rather unbelievably, as articulate as professors when they share their life-lessons thinly disguised as amusing anecdotes. Along with a few random and unrelated Dreaming stories these are inserted fairly clunkily into the book with the result that I felt like I read a combination whodunnit / high school social studies primer. I suspect most of this content would have appealed far more to Nesbo’s home audience than it did to me. But even if I hadn’t been mentally grizzling “but that wouldn’t happen like that” I’d still have been rolling my eyes at the rambling in this book. It needed a lot tighter editing.

When I read the next book in this series, THE REDBREAST, a couple of years ago I said of Harry

He is funny, smart, occasionally insolent, socially inept and has a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve. At first I liked him but his realistic and truly touching reaction to a particularly horrible event about half-way through the story made me love him to bits. I rarely think about wanting to meet fictional people (because, ya know, it’s impossible) but I’d happily engage in a bit of black magic if it meant I could have a chat with Harry.

I don’t feel nearly so enamoured of him having read this instalment of the series. I’m not sure exactly why as he did exhibit some of those characteristics I identified, though he wasn’t particularly funny or smart in THE BAT. But it was more than that…something to do with the inevitability of his new fall from grace (i.e. the one that happens in this book not the one that happened in his back story)…like he wasn’t even trying to fight it. And his investigative skills basically boiled down to a series of guesses, all but the last of which was wrong with awful, even fatal, consequences so I couldn’t really respect him as a policeman. The rest of the (many, many) people populating this story were caricatures…none of them terribly interesting.

To top it all off I found the ending preposterously unbelievable. If for no other reason than by that point any self-respecting policeman would surely have told the towering blonde foreigner (who by that time was sozzled as well) to take his theories, which up to that point had all been disastrously wrong, and sod off which would have spared at least one innocent life. But the police in this book continue to politely sit back and wait for Harry’s next ludicrous theory before doing anything that vaguely resembles their job.

Completists will presumably want to read this to gain an understanding of Harry’s past but I wouldn’t recommend it to others, especially not those who have yet to embark on the Harry Hole adventure. It doesn’t give you much of an idea of what future books will be like and it might put you off all together. Given the series had a legion of fans long before this book’s release it is obviously entirely possible to enjoy the series without having read this instalment. If you are going to read it I’d highly recommend the audio version I listened to as Seán Barrett is a great narrator; indeed one of my favourites (and for the linguistically challenged like myself you’ll finally learn how to properly pronounce Harry’s surname).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Narrator Seán Barrett
Translator Don Bartlett
Publisher Random House Audio [2012]
ASIN B009L9ES22
Length 10 hours 43 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 (chronologically) in the Harry Hole series

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Review: Headhunters by Jo Nesbo

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After a hiccup (I had discarded the book once but you convinced me to give it another go) I thoroughly enjoyed Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast and bought the rest of the series before I’d even finished the first book. I haven’t actually gotten around to reading any of them yet because every time I reach for the second book in the series I see its 600+ pages and decide to read something else. Something shorter. But a standalone novel is a whole different box of bananas and shorter than most of the Harry Hole novels so I was keen to read this one. Sadly for me it turned out not to be my cup of tea.

It is the story of Norwegian executive recruitment specialist Roger Brown (I never did discover how he ended up with such a thoroughly English name though concede this is probably my fault…my mind did wander on occasion) whose life spirals out of control in an increasingly gruesome way. Roger has a great job and a beautiful wife who he professes to adore but he feels he needs more money to fund his lifestyle so he has second job as an art thief. In a way, though not the way you might expect, it is this second job that gets him into trouble and sets up the main plot thread of the novel in which Roger matches wits with Clas Greve, a candidate for a top CEO job who ultimately becomes Roger’s arch enemy. The two play a game of cat and mouse across the Norwegian countryside and leave the landscape littered with bodies.

This book didn’t really tick any of the boxes on the list of things I look for in a good thriller and it had quite a few of the things that make me turn off (including scenes featuring poo). I found the characters flat and uninteresting which is probably the biggest problem I can have with a thriller. If characters are to be unlikeable I want them to be really unlikeable; the kind of people whose painful demise I guiltily yet eagerly anticipate. Here I just thought the two main characters were dull and I didn’t much care which of them lived, died or got the girl. The main woman was a non event; being defined only by her relationship to the men in the story and having a laughingly unbelievable relationship to her husband.

The story was a bit better than the characters but its cartoonish quality resulted in me not really being able to care about its many, increasingly implausible twists and I found myself picking apart relatively minor things like dodgy physics and technology. In a book I am enjoying I let that kind of thing was over me but here I wasn’t really engaged by the story and so the things stood out more (I can’t go into more detail without spoiling). Another thing which leapt out rather disconcertingly was the clunky product placements for brands of fridge, beer, furniture, clothing and so on. I go to some lengths to avoid being advertised at constantly so it really annoys me when it happens as part of a narrative. For me the ending to the book lost it half a star on my personal rating scale, seeming to lose the guts to be a tale of true noir right at the crucial moment and having a very clunky denouement.

I have something of a soft spot for high class thieves (blame my mother’s yen for Cary Grant which resulted in me watching To Catch a Thief dozens of times as a kid) so I was probably predisposed to liking this novel but it was not to be. To me it felt like a loosely connected series of vignettes in which bad stuff happened to not very nice people (and one poor dog) and not a lot in the way of thrills. As always alternative opinions are available and you shouldn’t just take my word for it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Headhunters has received more positive reviews at A Common Reader, Nordic Bookblog Petrona

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 2/5
Narrator Sean Barrett
Publisher Random House Audiobooks [2010]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 7 hours 50 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

This post is published at http://reactionstoreading.com if you are seeing it at another site then it has been stolen and/or used entirely without permission.

Books of the Month – October 2010

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That Was Then

I finished another 15 books during October (a couple of reviews still to come). Although I didn’t have any 5-star reads it was a high quality month with nothing rating below a 3. My pick of the month has to be Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast, a novel I abandoned on my first reading last year but picked up again after you all told me to and fell in love with the book’s protagonist, Harry Hole.

There are a veritable treasure trove of honourable mentions which I simply cannot separate. They include trips to Scotland, Iceland, Ghana, America, England, 1850′s Australia and Japan.

New Additions

Since buying my eReader I have curtailed my acquisition of printed books quite dramatically (good for the trees) but have been busy stocking up eBooks and audio downloads (bad for the bank balance). Included among my new acquisitions are the latest Belinda Lawrence mystery, a Harry Bosch novel (Maxine made me give Connelly another go), a flash fiction anthology of stories that involve a mythical ‘Mega Mart’, the second novel in Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer series (yes I know I’m behind) and a historical work that blends fact with fiction in what promises to be an interesting fashion.

Challenge Progress

It’s a good thing I had a whole year to complete the Global Reading Challenge as it looks like it will take me that long to finish it. This month I read another two books to bring my total to 19 of 21. Both Villain and Wife of the Gods made it to my honourable mentions for the month.

My only other open challenge is the Canadian Book Challenge which requires me to read 13 books by July next year. I read four books that counted for this challenge in October bringing my total to 7.

Isn’t it marvellous that Canada produces enough entertaining female crime writers that I can have a smorgasboard of them without even trying? Well I am assuming Wolfe is female though of course as it’s a pseudonym I could be wrong.

Reading Now and Next

I’m keen to finish the global challenge now that I only have 2 books to go so have started Southwesterly Wind which is set in Brazil and I’ll probably read my wildcard historical fiction straight after that. Then it might be time for my second Elly Griffiths novel I think. I’ve just started a new audio book, C J Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, which I am already enjoying and have no plans for what will come after that in audio format.

Chart of the month

So far this year I have finished 129 books which seemed like a statistically significant enough number to look at where they all come from. As you can see I buy most of my books in one form or another. Wonder what this will look like next year? Will I have a giant chunk of pie for pirated eBooks ( and if I do how will I hide it to avoid going to prison)?

What about you? What was your favourite book for October? Or your most exciting acquisition? Or is there something coming up for you in November that you can’t wait to get to?

It’s a wrap on the Scandinavian Reading Challenge

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The third reading challenge I have completed this year (or ever for that matter) is the brainchild of the delightful Amy from The Black Sheep Dances who proposed that participants read 6 books from the region that bought us Lego, Ikea and Carlsburg. I signed up immediately, hoping to expand my Scandinavian reading from its heavy concentration on Sweden which started when I discovered the other Larsson (Asa) a couple of years ago.

Dorte, who would know because she actually is Scandinavian, says that officially Scandinavia is only Denmark, Norway and Sweden but for the purposes of this challenge we were allowed to include Finland and Iceland too. Hopefully this has not caused any embarrassing international incidents or UN resolutions. I decided to read a book from each country plus an extra from somewhere. Of course me being me all the books were crime fiction.

From this admittedly small sampling of books I feel confident in busting a couple of myths:

  1. There is no ‘next Stieg Larsson’. There are a swag of great writers in the region but they have writing styles, personalities and storytelling abilities all of their very own and don’t need to be marketed as the next anyone.
  2. Scandinavians, even the ones in crime fiction, are not all dour and/or at the mercy of seasonal affective disorder. They can be sarcastic and tell jokes like the rest of us. Who knew?

Here is a quick reminder of the books I chose in the order I read them

  • Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason (Iceland) –  a sad, thoughtful, beautiful story that for me was all about yearning.
  • The Serbian Dane by Leif Davidsen (Denmark) – a suspense-filled tale about a planned crime and those who would thwart it that had me feeling sorry for an assassin.
  • The Mind’s Eye by Håkan Nesser (Sweden) – an upside-down procedural featuring a confident and very funny investigator
  • The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin (Sweden) – a chilling mix of whodunnit and ghost story in the most atmospheric of remote island settings
  • Snow Angels by James Thompson (Finland) – an absorbing look at the ups and downs of living in a small community set against the backdrop of a harrowing investigation
  • The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø (Norway) – a complex tale about choosing sides in a war and living with the consequences which introduced me to Inspector Harry Hole, a character who made me swoon

Though Hypothermia squeaks into top spot as my favourite of the bunch the others all have elements to recommend them and there isn’t a single dud in the group. About the only downside to the challenge is that it’s added a swag more titles to my TBR both now and into the future. Thanks Amy :)

Review: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

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My final book for Amy’s Scandinavian Reading Challenge is Jo Nesbo’s The Redbreast, set in Norway, which I had abandoned at around page 80 a year or so ago and fairly reluctantly started again only because you all told me to.

After nearly causing an international incident during a visit to Norway by the US President Detective Harry Hole is transferred within the police force and is charged with the surveillance of Nazi sympathisers. In what starts out as a barely related investigation he discovers that a very particular kind of weapon, one which would only be used for an assassination, is in the process of being smuggled into the country. What he has to uncover, before something disastrous happens, is what connection there is to a group of men who fought with the German occupying army during the second world war.

My initial lack of interest reading The Redbreast was due to its flashback passages to the battlefields of WW2. With regards to my entertainment war is one of two subjects* that is virtually guaranteed to make me zone out like a switch in my brain has been turned and all I hear and see is white noise (blame bad history teaches in my adolescence). However I made an extra effort to pay attention to The Redbreast this time and, though I still could have done without quite so many flashbacks, I did find the focus on the experiences of those who chose the wrong side during the war and were later treated as traitors quite fascinating and not something I’ve come across before (or at least not when I’ve been paying attention).

But the book has much besides its post-war musings to recommend it. First and foremost there is Harry Hole. He is funny, smart, occasionally insolent, socially inept and has a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve. At first I liked him but his realistic and truly touching reaction to a particularly horrible event about half-way through the story made me love him to bits. I rarely think about wanting to meet fictional people (because, ya know, it’s impossible) but I’d happily engage in a bit of black magic if it meant I could have a chat with Harry. And perhaps give him a hug. It might give you some sense of just how much I adored him that I immediately purchased all the other books in which he appears even though I won’t read any of them for a while just so I could have them nearby.

There are other equally well-drawn characters in the book, though many of them are the kind of repugnant individuals whose eyes you want to scratch out (or is that just me?). My favourite one to hate was Bernt Brandhaug, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who likes to blackmail women, including Harry’s possible love interest, to sleep with him. Though despicable he is entirely too credible, as is the neo-Nazi youth Sverre Olsen, whose blaming of foreigners for the problems in his life rather than taking responsibility for his own inadequacies has a sadly familiar ring to it. This dark side of human nature is nicely balanced though by great characters like Harry’s colleagues Ellen, a feisty young woman who continues to help Harry after he is transferred to a different section, and Halvorsen a relatively new officer who is drawn into Harry’s investigation somewhat reluctantly.

The plot is very complicated, probably a little too much to be honest as there were one or two twists that didn’t seem to add much except confusion, but overall it hangs together well. The flashbacks are incorporated well (it’s not Nesbø’s fault I get bored at the first hint of wartime activity) and the mostly short chapters headed by dates help to provide much needed structure for the multi-threaded story which plays out over the course of many months. I’m sure this is all helped along by a great translation which makes the book flow very easily and naturally.

I’m still not convinced The Redbreast needed to be a hand-cramping 618 pages long, it was far too dense and detailed in parts, and there were some passages that felt muddled, like the incorporation of an enormously complicated psychological condition in an overly simplistic and not terribly realistic way. But overall these points were far outweighed by the excellent characters and well-structured narrative. I’m thrilled I have four more (so far) opportunities to catch up with Harry sometime soon.

The Redbreast has also been reviewed at Euro Crime (by Karen), Euro Crime (by Norman) and Material Witness

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4.5/5 (it’s probably a 4 but I’m giving Harry a half a point all of his own because I can)
Translator Don Bartlett
Publisher Vintage Books
ISBN 9780099478546
Length 618 pages
Format mass market paperback
Source My collection

In the never-ending confusion over publishing order of translated books The Redbreast is the first of the Harry Hole stories available in English (there are two earlier novels not yet available as far as I can tell) but it was not the first to be translated into English so you can’t get the series order by relying on publication dates. The listing on Fantastic Fiction appears to be in the correct series order.

* the other subject that puts me to sleep is gangsters/mafia.

OK you win (a Scandinavian Reading Challenge update)

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The other day I asked you which Jo Nesbo book I should read for the Norway leg of the Scandinavian Reading Challenge and 81% of you said I should give The Redbreast another go despite having abandoned it once before. Even though the challenge’s host, Amy, promised she wouldn’t send the book challenge police around to my place if I failed to read a book set in Norway I shall make this one of those rare occasions when I do what I am told and will tackle The Redbreast some time soon.

I have already read these four books for the challenge

In addition to The Redbreast I am also planning to read Snow Angels by James Thompson which is set in Finland. This will be a particularly good challenge for me to complete because all the books were either on my TBR shelves already or obtainable from the library.

Of course Scandinavian blogger and writer Dorte from the excellent DJs krimiblog tells us that Iceland and Finland aren’t officially Scandinavian (though they are Nordic countries) but they were on the map that Amy used as the image for the challenge so I am going to count them for the challenge with sincere apologies to any offended Scandinavians.

Help needed – which Jo Nesbo book should I read?

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For the Scandinavian Reading Challenge I need to read a book set in Norway. I have decided it will be a Jo Nesbo book because (a) they’re set in Norway and (b) everyone says they’re wonderful.

I started reading his first book, The Redbreast, sometime last year and I gave up at about page 80. The book has two threads, a historical one and a present-day one and I remember enjoying the present day story but I got a bit bored and lost with the lads in the trenches of WW2 which is what the historical part of the story seemed to be dealing with.

So my dilemma is…should I have another go at The Redbreast so that I get a proper introduction to Harry Hole? Or could I skip to Nesbo’s second novel Nemisis? Or perhaps I could go straight to the last novel?

Please help me choose which book to read by voting below and/or leaving a comment.