The Review: This most recent (paperback) iteration of the Harry Hole series has a split personality, of sorts.  On one hand, it is the most developed and intense of the novels so far – layered with complexities and twists that just. keep. coming.  This would, superficially, make it the “best” thus far, in terms of overall intellectual quality.  But on the other hand, it feels at times like it was a little overdone.  Like there were too many twists and complexities.  Too many red herrings.

I think the issue is, simply, that the killer seemed to be too many steps ahead of Harry the whole time.  The whole thing seemed a little too convoluted – a little too good to be true.  The various connections were so complex that they slightly strain plausibility.  And I felt like it was all in the pursuit of putting Harry in a worse position than we saw him in at the end of The Snowman.  Nesbø trying to one-up himself, essentially.  It makes the last hundred or so pages a bit more of a slog than they needed to be.  I think we would’ve all been quite content to see the wrap-up happen as Harry thinks it does and to let this case be… not simple, not without scars, but I thought it almost sadistic the way Nesbø pushed Harry further.  Perhaps it was all in the (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)

service of sending Harry back to Hong Kong at the end of the novel.  Pushing him so far that he has, truly, no choice but to run away again.  I felt that way about Rakel’s brief reappearance as well.  Although, now, as I talk about it I realize that perhaps this is pursuing a larger goal: another trilogy, of sorts.  Where Harry dealt with the fallout from The Redbreast (a nice throwback here, with the gun) and that bastard Tom Waaler for two further books, perhaps this is a trilogy stemming from The Snowman through the upcoming Phantom.  This time, it’s about Harry’s personal demons – a more psychologically (although perhaps less immediately active) engaging through-line, to be sure.

But I will say this: Harry’s dogged perseverance in leaving… it’s admirable.  We don’t have heroes like that anymore, in fiction or in reality.  I know he’ll be called back again – and that there are still three unpublished US translations from his earlier days (hey, Vintage/Black Lizard.  GET ON THAT.  Much appreciated.) – but in the meantime, one must imagine Harry Hole happy.

As for the central crime, it’s got some lovely callbacks to classic crime – a snowy cabin where all the victims spent the night, an antique and strange murder weapon… there’s more than a little Agatha Christie here in my mind.  And even a little James Bond, with Harry flying to the Congo to chase down a lead.  The deities of the “mystery” genres are all here in spirit – but for some reason it all feels (I say again) a bit overstuffed.

Rating: 4 out of 5.  I don’t actually have that much more to say, oddly enough.  It’s still an excellently written novel, with pages that practically get ripped out by the speed with which you will turn them.  And Harry is such a genuinely likable rogue that you can’t help but be won over by… what is it Rakel calls it?  ”His boyish charm”?  But there’s something about this book that just doesn’t quite do it for me in the same way that the earlier novels did.  Perhaps it was the somewhat padded length – perhaps it was just a little undercooked.  But I look forward to getting the rest of the backstory on our dear Mr. Hole – as well as seeing where his crooked path leads next.

I am back with a second book review of Jo Nesbø’s Detective Harry Hole but this time it coincided with the Norway attacks that BBC called, “the worst peacetime massacre in the country’s modern history.” It felt almost weirdly surreal that as I was slowly unraveling the story plot, what was fictional became larger than life and essentially reflected reality.

The Redbreast is written by Norwegian writer Nesbø featuring the fictional Detective Harry Hole from the Crime Squad who is every bit an atypical law enforcer – heavy smoker, alcoholic and spotting a disheveled appearance – essentially, a loose cannon in the police force. This book is a prequel to The Devil’s Star, which I have previously did a review on, so if you are interested, click here to read it.

The main story plot is about how Hole attempts to stop a former World War II veteran who is bent on destruction. Concurrently, it was interspersed with other sub-plots, involving the death of Ellen, his best friend and colleague at work, a wartime love story and Hole’s romantic involvement, that all came together in the end. The sense of suspense was cleverly crafted and built up throughout the story, transporting readers behind and ahead of time and space whilst piecing together the bits and bobs onto a coherent timeline.

Yet the terribly creepy part would be the similarities shared on and off paper. Anti-immigrant sentiments, racist skinheads and neo-Nazi fanatical already sound like a perfect concoction for a complex story and has shown to also have convoluted implications in the aftermath of the massacre.

“They let the enemy build mosques in our midst, let them rob our old folk and mingle blood with our women,” said Sverre Olsen, a shaven-headed man with swastikas on his left forearm and his neo-Nazi party emblem on the right. “It is no more than our duty as Norwegians to protect our race and to eliminate those who fail us.”

Olsen is a fictional character in the book, a self-proclaimed racist charged in court for attacking a Vietnamese immigrant.

Contrast this with Anders Behring Breivik, the gunman who after planting a bomb in Oslo city centre, went on a shooting rampage on an island killing 68 people. He was driven by his aim to wage a war against the islamicization of Europe.

“If they [the cultural Marxists], against all odds, gave up on multiculturalism tomorrow, if they stopped all Muslim immigration and started the deportation of all Muslims, I would forgive them for their past crimes. If they refuse to surrender until 2020, there will be no turning back.”

These statements literally sent a cold shiver down my spine, especially when I grew up in a country that promulgates multiculturalism in diversity (versus assimilation immigrant policies). As such, Singapore’s social fabric is constructed in a very different manner from those in Norway, the latter that up till the 70s still made up of people who were culturally and ethnically homogeneous people. In Nesbo’s words, “the Norwegian self-image before 22 July 2011 was that of a virgin – nature untouched by human hands, a nation unsullied by the ills of society.”

But we could still take a leaf out of the Norwegian tragedy. Singapore has in recent years been struggling with immigration problems and a growing resentment against these incoming new citizens, even featuring as a hot political issue during the May election this year. With about 35% of our population made up of non-residents and permanent residents, it is perhaps time to reflect and think about our own immigrant policies.

As a final note, The Redbreast is not only an intellectually interesting mystery/thriller read, but also voices out the deep social problems in Norway and various Scandinavian countries. Hence, you can easily treat this book as purely fictional or a critical social commentary to help you look deeper and harder about your society, your friends and your neighbors-next-door.

The Short Version:

The Review:  Easily the best of the Harry Hole books so far.  Easily.  Hands down.  Far and away.  The end left me furiously turning the pages and barely stopping to catch my breath.  No, seriously, I realized I was almost panting at the end of the novel – my blood was pumping, I was locked into this story in a way that only the best crime novelists can pull off.

I also now understand why Harper Perennial got these three books but not, unfortunately, the others in the Harry Hole series – these three form a loose sort of trilogy.  The first two (publication dates still unknown for the US) are referenced often (especially the Sydney case) in this book and I wish I could read those… but these three books have the overarching story of Ellen, Harry’s former partner – the one murdered at the end of The Redbreast.  We know that Tom Waaler was involved and Harry spends all of his time over the course of Nemesis and leading into this novel trying to pin Waaler for the crime (and for his general arms-smuggling ring).  What I never expected is that this would all finally pay off – and come to a closure that benefits an inter-series trilogy like this one.

The relationship between Waaler and Hole develops most in this novel.  To see Waaler trying to cajole Harry – and then to hear Harry (potentially…) agree to work with him – was stunning.  The respectful near-Moriarty/Holmes relationship that they develop during the novel is… unsettling.  For Harry and for the reader.  It makes you stay on your toes and that’s all due to Nesbø’s impeccable plotting.  He keeps it tense through the whole novel and I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen.  I didn’t know who the murderer was – and the overlapping pieces of the story were played in such a perfect way that tension just built.  The fourth murder, for example, plays out on the page in such a way that you’re wondering if this is really going to be it, if they’re really going to catch him – and then it gets blown wide open in the most jaw-droppingly cool way.

If I had a complaint about the novel, I’d say that the wrap-up of the serial killer felt a bit much.  It seemed a bit too perfunctory, there was a bit too much that was too jarring about it – but then, as I had that thought, I followed up with the realization that this novel wasn’t about the serial killer.  It was about Hole and Waaler, completely – and boy oh boy does it pay off.  The final twists and turns between Harry and Waaler are so fantastically done that I was, I admit, saddened to see it end.  I won’t spoil it – I’ll simply suffice it to say that there is closure.  Finite and complete closure.  Wonderful closure.  Brutal, heart-stopping, pulse-pounding closure.  I can’t really talk any more without SPOILERS, which in this case I think would do a disservice to the trilogy as a whole, let alone this single book.

One thing I did notice in this book that stuck out, in a way that I never noticed in the first two Hole books (perhaps because it wasn’t there…?) was the almost Pushing Daisies-esque narration that sometimes popped in.  The beginning, with the details about the water racing down through the house… the occasional “if this – but alas, this” kind of thing you could just hear Jim Dale saying… It isn’t jarring or anything and doesn’t stick out in a cutesy or weird way – but it was just fun to see the author winking at his reader now and then.  So many authors forget that, at the end of the day, it is all about entertainment – and what’s a little wink now and then?

Rating: 5 out of 5.  Like I said, the strongest of the three Harry Hole novels that Harper published.  The final book of that ‘trilogy’ – and now Knopf is publishing them even further out of order, skipping over “book 6″ and going right to book 7 with The Snowman… it pains me.  But, regardless – this novel is worth your time.  You have to read the first two books, of course, in order to know meet Harry and Ellen and Rakel and really come to understand what was happening previously that leads to the denouement found in the last hundred pages of this book.  All told, though, this is easily the strongest “Nordic” crime trilogy since Larsson’s Millenium trilogy – but it’s actually (shhhh) better.  It has a stronger writer and if it lacks an iconic ‘original’ character like Lisbeth, it more than makes up for it in Hole’s classical detective figure.

The Short Version:

The Review: There are few things I enjoy more than a well-constructed crime novel.  I’m not talking about the manufactured trash of airport novel crime – I mean Tana French, Steig Larsson, and – yes – Jo Nesbo.  Harkening back to the glory days of Poe’s Dupin and Conan Doyle’s Holmes, these are authors who create characters that become part of the consciouness.  Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad is richly imagined, I don’t need to rave any further about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist – and Harry Hole is as deserving of inclusion as anyone.

I’m not sure that I liked this book better than The Redbreast – I thought that the reveals went on a little long at the end of Nemesis and that there seemed to be a few too many wrong-turn denouements.  Also, Hole’s trip to Brazil seemed a little… well, unnecessary.  I understand that the first two books in the series (yet to be published here in the States) have Hole in Thailand and Australia, so Nesbo’s faithful Nordic readers must’ve been itching for more adventure when Hole didn’t leave Norway during The Redbreast.  The villainy, though, was acceptably complicated.  That is, as much as the multiple “oh, wait, it ISN’T over!” moments grew tiresome, the actual reveals never did.  Breathless anticipation, high stakes at each turn, and that very real feeling of being wrong that so rarely afflicts our favorite detectives.  Sure, they get things wrong… but quickly get them right and are smug in that feeling of rightness.  Not so with Hole.  There are times when the entire enterprise seems to be out of Harry’s control and he’s simply trying – and failing – to keep up.  There’s a bit of anti-hero mentality about this hero and that’s what makes him fun to be with.

Hole’s new female sparring partner in the police force, Beate Lonn, is perhaps the best addition to come from this book.  Hole is obviously still reeling from Ellen’s death – at the hands of that bastard Waaler, who is increasingly disgusting as the series continues – and introducing a new female partner on the force who he is trying to befriend… it just works.  The scene where he tries to get Beate – a no-nonsense, shy girl with an overly developed facial recognition center in her brain (sounds far-fetched but it really isn’t – it’s very much this touch of an Aspberger’s/austism-esque affliction that makes Beate even more realistic) – to run through the question-game that he and Ellen used to play… it was funny and sad and frustrating all at the same time.

Rating: 4 out of 5.  There wasn’t anything particularly spectacular about this book, except that it stands above a good 90% of its competition in the mystery section.  It was just really damn good.  I will say that I hope the conflict between Waaler and Hole comes to a head in the next book – I found myself a little frustrated that Harry hasn’t been able to finally make that one conclusive link or that Waaler hasn’t made that one tiny slip.  Of course, that’s perhaps a testament to Nesbo’s writing – it feels real enough that I’m betrayed by the bad guy continuing to get away with doing bad things.

This is apparently the third book in the Harry Hole series – the first two, however, have yet to be published in the US.  Harper has published the fourth and fifth books, however, and I’ve got a copy of Nemesis sitting on my to-read shelf right now.  I actually won these two books from a contest at The Olive Reader, making them the third contest win and third/fourth books I’ve gotten from them… which is AWESOME.  Best part is, this book was actually really quite good (as opposed to sort-of good – The Shadow Year – and not very good at all – Totally Killer).

I love a good detective/mystery series.  Chalk it up to my youthful adoration of Holmes, perhaps.  Tana French is one of my favorite authors, Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy is one of the best ever, I love Lisa Lutz’s Spellman Family, and I’m starting to get into Rebus.  If you put together a good police procedural mystery, chances are I’ll enjoy it – but there has to be something else.

To be honest, I didn’t love this book at first because of the “something else”.  It took me a while to get onboard with the stuff from the past.  There’s a whole chunk of the book, towards the beginning (all first-half – well, almost all), that takes place on the Eastern Front and in a hospital during the second World War.  It’s all pretty fascinating and everything – and very well-written – but as this is an American’s first introduction to Harry Hole, I really wanted to be spending more time with him.

That said, I thought once we did start spending time with Hole, it was time well spent.  He hasn’t come as fully formed into my head as some of the other European detectives who I mentioned earlier – but I chalk that up to the strange introduction I’ve received.  The plot twists and turns a couple of times and keeps you on the very edge of figuring it out… but never lets you fully get there until Hole himself does.  Its that nagging “something isn’t right about this” that keeps your mind working throughout the novel and I liked that, a lot.

Did I think that the romantic subplot was a little clunky and ungainly?  Sure.  I also felt like there was (well, I knew there was) a past that I was missing.  I really look forward to Harper publishing the first two Hole novels so I can revist the earlier days, see what some of these references mean, etc.

Rating: 4 out of 5. This is a great novel – its a bit of a beach-read type story (as most detective novels seem to be, exception: Tana French) but its a smart one.  I look forward to Nemesis and the further adventures of Harry Hole.  I wouldn’t call Jo Nesbø “the next Steig Larsson” (as some have said) but I definitely think he’s a cut above most other mystery/thriller writers.