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The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

Artist, April 22, 2012

Jo Nesbø is known for his crime novels about my new favorite Detective Harry Hole, of the Oslo Crime Squad. "Red Breast" isn't even his first novel, but it is the first Nesbø novel I've read. I loved Steig Larsson, and so, at the suggestion of my sister and following the Scandinavian theme, I started on the Harry Hole series. I'm currently reading "The Leopard" which is every bit as riveting. (It doesn't really matter if you go out of the sequence since one book doesn't rely on a knowledge of the previous one.) I don't know how Nesbø stayed off my radar so long since he's sold close to two million copies of his novels in Norway, but there you are. There are even walking tours of the fictitious detective's haunts around Oslo.

What makes Harry Hole so attractive? He's cut from a classic American (1930's) mold; a loner, with lots of flaws, including use of illegal substances, trouble with maintaining a relationship with women, insubordination, and the tendency toward depression one expects of tragic heroes. Like Stieg Larsson's hero Mikael Blomkvist he is fully committed to ending the activities of extremely bad men, but unlike Blomkvist, he struggles with his own personal demons as well as with the expectations of his career and subtle threads of corruption that are part of a continuing theme in the two books I've read. Nesbø is a brilliant plotter and everything comes together in the end of each of these books in a highly satisfying way.

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