Following another of Nesbo’s most exciting novels, Police (the sequel to Phantom) comes the English language release of Cockroaches, a very early novel originally published in Norway in 1998, the second in the Harry Hole series. This novel has won no prizes, and those who read it, as I did, in the hope of seeing the continuing development of an author who made a quantum leap from his fairly simple first two novels (The Bat, and Cockroaches, both OK) to the complex and superbly developed novel The Redbreast (outstanding), his third novel, may be disappointed by this novel’s consistent lack of clear focus. In Cockroaches, Detective Harry Hole is chosen by the Norwegian Foreign Office to go to Thailand to investigate the murder of Norway’s ambassador to Thailand, who has been found in a brothel with an elaborate old knife in his back. . Readers who have enjoyed the later novels may be surprised by this one, which shows little about Harry himself and even less about the secondary characters, but those who have read all the other Harry Hole novels will probably also read this one, for the sake of “completion,” if nothing else. Those new to the series may want to begin with The Redbreast, certainly one of the best of the series, and then read the others in the series in the order in which they were published.
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An action-packed debut novel in which reality and virtual reality overlap, Game reflects the game of life with an alarming twist, one that raises serious questions about how much control over our own lives any of us readers might be willing to give up in exchange for the excitement and ego-stroking of an on-going virtual reality game. Here, Henrik “HP” Pettersson, a young Swede in his thirties, with too little to do and no sense of responsibility, finds a cell phone on the commuter train to Stockholm. Not surprisingly, he decides to keep it. When he opens it, he discovers a message: “Wanna play a game?” He ignores it, wanting only to figure out how to use it as a phone. When the message changes to “Wanna play a game, Henrik Petterson?” he is stunned. And when the phone will not take no for an answer, HP concludes that some of his friends are playing a trick on him. He decides that the only way to get back at them is to play the game and beat them at it. He soon finds himself playing a “game” in which his very life and the lives of everyone he knows are at stake.
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“Everything is falling apart…The parents are demanding to pick up their children. The barricade is crowded with people who intend to help them free the children… They don’t understand what they are risking if the infection gets out and there isn’t any medicine.” This dramatic quotation instantly establishes the intensity of STRANGE BIRD, a novel from Sweden by Anna Jansson, candidate for the Glass Key Award for Best Scandinavian Novel in 2012. Its story concerns a pandemic of bird flu on an island off the Swedish coast. A new name to American readers, Anna Jansson has had a dual career as both a nurse and a writer, and has already sold over two million copies of her Nordic crime novels throughout ten countries in Europe. Now available to an English-speaking audience, Strange Bird will undoubtedly captivate new readers, sweeping them up with the provocative opening chapters, as the action begins on Gotland, a sparsely inhabited island in the Baltic, sixty miles off the coast of Sweden.
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He’s done it again! With over twenty million copies sold, and over a dozen Nordic prizes and nominations for crime writing under his belt, Norwegian author Jo Nesbo is certainly at the top of his game, and this novel, which fans will almost certainly agree is the best one yet, is sure to win him even greater recognition and even more readers. The dramatic and terrifying teasers at the end of this novel also guarantee that devoted readers will be waiting in line for the next novel in this Oslo based series, which centers on the troubled and alcoholic Inspector Harry Hole and those he has worked with in the Oslo Police Department. In Phantom, the preceding novel, Harry Hole suffers grievous injuries, and this novel begins where that one left off. Both Kripos and the Crime Squad are collaborating here on a series of cases in which a serial killer is murdering policemen who are have been unsuccessful in solving a sensational murder case at some time in the past. Each policeman or investigator is murdered on the anniversary of that unsolved murder, and usually in the same location as that murder. The first policeman dies a grisly death at a ski slope at night, and the similarities between this death and one that has remained unsolved from the past is immediately obvious to the investigators. Subsequent murders of police involve “sex, sadism, and the use of knives,” and frequently violence to the face with a blunt object. Author Nesbo plays a cat-and-mouse game with the reader in this one.
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The cover description of this novel as “An Inspector Erlendur Novel” is misleading, especially for long-time followers of the dark and damaged inspector from Reykjavic and his grim and often grisly investigations. Erlendur, in fact, does not appear at all, either in person or by telephone. At the end of Hypothermia, the previous novel in the Erlendur series, he has left to go hiking in the sparsely populated East Fjords, taking a break from his personal problems and the frequently horrific problems involving his children, his former wife, and their relationships with him. No one has heard from him in almost two weeks. Elinborg, filling in at the office, is quite different from Erlendur. Living with the supportive Teddi and their two children, Elinborg is a cookbook author in her free time, specializing in desserts, and working on her second cookbook, and she tries to keep the lines of communication open with her children, though her older son, in his late teens, is something of a mystery to her, at this point. Were it not for the nature of the crimes themselves – in this case, the rapes and disappearances of women, the use of rohypnol (the “date rape” drug) to paralyze victims, and a gruesome murder which opens the book – Outrage would come as close to a “cozy” as the darkly noir author Arnaldur Indridason is probably capable of writing. The twisted and often macabre aspects of life seen in the book (and film) of Indridason’s Jar City, for example, have been softened here, reflecting the more feminine, intuitive approach of Elinborg and her efforts to communicate wherever possible with both victims and perpetrators, as she works to solve crimes.
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