The Bat, Norwegian author Jo Nesbo’s earliest of his nine Harry Hole mysteries, is intriguing for many reasons, not least for the growth it shows in Nesbo’s narrative and stylistic talents. Harry has been sent to Australia to help the murder investigation of a young women from Australia who was working at a local bar when she was killed. An attractive blonde, she had been fending off advances from her strange bartender; avoiding her even stranger landlord and his vicious “Tasmanian Devil” of a dog; and spending her nights with a man known to have many connections to the drug world. As the police investigate, it becomes clear that they may be looking for a serial killer obsessed with blonde women. Harry’s partner here is an Aborigine who had been a boxer, and Nesbo reveals much about Aborigine culture, their myths and legends, beliefs, and value system. Though the author is describing a fascinating culture, these digressions, unfortunately, do not advance the action and feel added on to the story. The novel occasionally resembles a travelogue, with each trip to a new part of Sydney or outside it described in vivid detail, though Nesbo does provide enough blood and thunder to keep readers reading, even as they may wonder where the sometimes rambling plot is going. Worth reading if you are already familiar with the series.
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Firmly connected to the cold, often bleak landscapes they inhabit, Per Petterson’s characters are never frivolous, however impulsive and even violent their actions might be. Often shackled by circumstances over which they have little control, they respond in the only ways they can, sometimes self-destructively. Their parents can sometimes offer little guidance, even by way of example, and growing up becomes a question of actions followed either by reward or, more likely, by punishment. In the ironically entitled It’s Fine By Me, an early Petterson novel from 1992, Audun Sletten shares his life from his teen years to age twenty, always honest in his feelings, sometimes to his own detriment, and always sensitive to his personal standards of behavior which the rest of the world does not always understand or share. Beautifully developed and filled with details which ring true, not just in terms of the time and setting, but in terms of psychological honesty, It’s Fine By Me feels almost autobiographical in its ability to convey real feelings by real people. The moving conclusion to this novel shows Ardun’s growth – often with the help of those who care about him – and readers who see themselves (at least in some aspect) within the character of Ardun will celebrate his coming of age – all the while knowing that Ardun is a work in progress and that he’ll never be able to take life or his own responses to threats for granted.
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In this seventh novel in the Harry Hole series to be translated into English, author Jo Nesbo, with over eleven million thrillers in print, continues to detail Harry’s fight against the symbolic “white whales” of injustice. Here, all Harry’s experience and knowledge as an Oslo policeman are readied for the biggest fight of his life, one to which he willingly makes a complete emotional commitment. Though he has lived in Hong Kong in self-imposed exile for three years, Harry has just learned that Oleg, the son of Rakel, the love of his life, is now jailed on remand in Oslo for the murder of a drug dealer and is, surprisingly, a drug addict himself. Harry himself has always had problems with alcohol, bureaucratic nonsense, and self-control, even during his career with the Oslo Police, and he has battle scars, both visible and invisible, which have made him a cynical man. He immediately returns to Oslo to review the case, hoping that he can save Oleg, who has always thought of him as “Dad.” Now “clean,” Harry sets to work to find out more about Oleg’s involvement in this case that he must win.
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Anyone who is already a fan of Jo Nesbo and his nail-biting Nordic noir mysteries will enjoy this non-stop, action-packed continuation of the Harry Hole series. Many of the familiar characters (and enemies) are back as Harry is persuaded to return from Hong Kong, where he has been spending his “hiatus” from the Oslo Crime Squad in an alcoholic haze. He is now in debt to the Hong Kong Triad, which as taken his passport to prevent his leaving without paying his debts. Three gruesome murders have taken place back in Oslo while he has been gone, however, and investigators are exploring the possibility of yet another serial killer on the loose. Harry Hole is the best in the business in tracking down serial killers, having just resolved the case of The Snowman, a particularly vicious killer of women, and the Oslo Crime Squad wants him back. By far the most complicated of the Harry Hole novels so far, this one is a special challenge at six hundred eleven pages, and readers of The Snowman will have an advantage in understanding some of the characters who reappear here.
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Set in Oslo in 1961, author Roy Jacobsen tells the story of Finn, a small boy of about nine, and his divorced, and later widowed, mother as they cope with life’s hard realities. Extremely close, they struggle to make ends meet, his mother always making it a point to be at home when he returns from school, and working only part-time at a shoe store. Finn’s “hard realities” become much harder when circumstances force his mother to rent out his room to a boarder. One interview with a potential boarder is so intense that she closes the door on Finn and conducts it in private, learning that the woman is not a potential boarder but her ex-husband’s second wife, the mother of Finn’s half-sister Linda. She does not share any of this information with Finn, but she is preoccupied and tense for weeks afterward. When his mother finally admits that not only does he have a half-sister named Linda but that the strange little girl will be moving in with them immediately, Finn’s world crashes, and he begins his journey toward understanding of himself, his mother, and life in general. Filled with surprises and shocks.
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