Review: POLICE, Jo Nesbo

• published by Harvill Secker London 2013
• ISBN 978-1-84655597-98
• 518 pages
• translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett
• #8 in the Oslo sequence
• from my local library

Synopsis (Random House Australia)

The police urgently need Harry Hole
A killer is stalking Oslo's streets. Police officers are being slain at the scenes of crimes they once investigated, but failed to solve. The murders are brutal, the media reaction hysterical.

But this time, Harry can't help anyone

For years, detective Harry Hole has been at the centre of every major criminal investigation in Oslo. His dedication to his job and his brilliant insights have saved the lives of countless people. But now, with those he loves most facing terrible danger, Harry can't protect anyone.

Least of all himself.

My Take

A Jo Nesbo novel is never a light read, and at 518 pages POLICE bears this out. It has taken me over a week to read, partly because I didn't seem to be able to digest more than about 50 pages at a time.

This is not a novel you can read as a stand-alone either. There are references to Harry's earlier cases, and indeed remembering a little about some of them seems crucial to making sense of POLICE. There are characters such as the Chief of Police Mikael Bellmann and Harry Hole's lover Rakel who provide a thread of continuity from one novel to another.

Harry Hole's clear up rate is legendary in the Oslo Police and so we know that if he can't work out who the Cop Killer is, no one can. But Harry is no longer officially part of the police force, which is a conundrum. And for about a third of the novel we are wondering exactly where Harry is.

I came away from POLICE wondering if every thread had been satisfactorily tied off. Certainly corruption is not confined to the criminals and the official version of events is not always what actually happened. Underneath is Harry Hole's version of justice.

My rating: 4.7

Reviews to check
Karen @ EuroCrime
Marilyn Stasio @ New York Times

Did you see this news? (from Jo Nesbo's site)

We are delighted to announce two new novels from Jo Nesbø writing under the pen name Tom Johansen. The first book, Blood on Snow, will be published in autumn 2014 with the second, Blood On Snow 2 (working title), to follow in spring 2015. Further information about both books and Tom Johansen will be revealed in early 2014.

It seems also that, though translated as #8 in "the Oslo sequence" POLICE is actually #10 in the series.

I also saw this among the site's news items.

30 September 2013

Jo has four titles on the bestseller lists in Norway this week. Doctor Proctor and the Great Gold Robbery (Doctor Proctor #4, published in 2012) is No. 1 and Police is No. 8 on the official list for fiction.
Phantom (Harry Hole #9, published in 2011) is No. 11 and Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder (Doctor Proctor #1, published in 2007) is No. 14 on the official paperback list .

For me it reinforces how little I actually know about Jo Nesbo although I have read all of the following
NEMESIS
THE REDEEMER
5.0, THE SNOWMAN
4.8, THE LEOPARD
4.7, HEADHUNTERS
4.7, PHANTOM
4.7, THE BAT

Review: I CAN SEE IN THE DARK, Karin Fossum

• Published by Harvill Secker 2013
  
• translated by James Anderson from Norwegian
• ISBN 978-1-846-55613-5
• 250 pages
• library book

Synopsis (Random House Australia)

A brilliant stand-alone crime novel from Norway's queen of crime.

Riktor doesn't like the way the policeman comes straight into the house without knocking. He doesn't like the arrogant way he observes his home.The policeman doesn't tell him why he's there, and Riktor doesn't ask. Because he knows he's guilty of a terrible crime.

But it turns out that the policeman isn't looking for a missing person. He is accusing Riktor of something totally unexpected. Riktor doesn't have a clear conscience, but this is a crime he certainly didn't commit.

My Take

If you have a loved one in a nursing home, this certainly might make you wonder what motivates the people who work there.

Riktor nurses the elderly. That is his speciality. He says he wants to bring something special to their last days. But it isn't the milk of human kindness that flows through his veins, but a very nasty sadistic streak, that is finally his undoing.

I CAN SEE IN THE DARK is told from Riktor's point of view. Because of his appearance he has been an outsider all of his life and it seems not even his mother really loved him. He lives on his own, and has no friends, although occasionally he thinks he would like a woman in his life.

But then he comes up against a policeman who says he can smell a crime.

An engrossing read, well up with Karin Fossum's best.

My rating: 4.7

Other reviews to check

• Crime Fiction Lover 
• Fiction Fascination 
• Cappelen Damm

Other Karin Fossum titles I've reviewed

BLACK SECONDS
BROKEN
THE WATER'S EDGE
4.9, BAD INTENTIONS
5.0, THE CALLER

Review: THE DEVIL'S SANCTUARY, Marie Hermanson

• first published in Swedish in Sweden in 2011
• translated into English by Neil Smith 2013
• ISBN 978-1-84744-576-6
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Hachette Australia)

A breathless, heart-stopping psychological thriller from one of Sweden's best selling authors. Fear lies around every corner. . .

Estranged identical twins Daniel and Max have a complex relationship, so when Daniel goes to visit his bi-polar brother in a remote and expensive Swiss 'recovery' clinic, he has no idea what really lies in wait for him. Lulled by the routine and peacefulness of the clinic, Daniel finds himself unquestioningly accepting Max's plea for help in taking care of some business, and the brothers swap places for a few days.

But soon Daniel realises Max isn't coming back, and that the clinic is far from a place of recovery. Struggling to get anyone to believe who he really is, Daniel finds himself trapped in a cruel and highly secretive prison: this is no sanctuary, it's a living nightmare.

My Take

Daniel really should have known better than to trust his twin brother Max when he invited Daniel to visit him at the Swiss clinic in Himelstat. And then his proposal that they swap places for a few days was quite ludicrous, but then Daniel was always the more compliant. Only too late does Daniel realise that Max will not be coming back any time soon, and that Himelstat is not a place you can just walk out of.

Once Daniel decides to reveal to management that he and his brother have swapped and that Max has escaped, he realises that no-one is going to release him, particularly after the doctor in charge of him starts talking about multiple personalities in the one body. Attempts to escape show him that he doesn't know who he can trust, particularly when it appears that most of the other residents are psychopaths.

The plotlines verge on science fiction and fantasy and give the author some chances to explore possible treatments of psychiatric disorders.

For some reason the story kept reminding me of the 1960s British TV series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan. Mind you I don't remember the story all that well, just that nothing was ever what it seemed.

To be quite honest, this is a most peculiar novel but it wasn't just the idea that my face to face reading group want to discuss it in a couple of weeks' time that kept me reading. I'm curious now to read another by this author, although THE DEVIL'S SANCTUARY appears to be the first of her novels translated into English..

My rating: 4.3

About the Author
An author and journalist, Marie Hermanson published her first book in 1986. Her novels are huge bestsellers in Scandinavia, and Musselstranden (Clam Beach) is considered a modern classic, with over 250,000 copies sold. Mannen under trappan (The Man Under the Stairs) was adapted into a TV drama in 2009. She lives in Gothenberg, Sweden.

Review: BLACK SKIES, Arnaldur Indridason

• First published in Icelandic in 2009
• This edition published in English by Harvill Secker 2012
• translated into English by Victoria Cribb
• ISBN 978-1-846-55581-7
• 330 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Amazon)

A man is making a crude leather mask with slits for eyes and mouth, and an iron spike fixed in the middle of the forehead. It is a 'death mask', once used by Icelandic farmers to slaughter calves. He has revenge in mind.

Meanwhile, with Detective Erlendur absent, his baseball-loving colleague Sigurdur Óli is in the spotlight. A school reunion has left Sigurdur Óli dissatisfied with life in the police force. Iceland is enjoying an economic boom and young tycoons are busy partying with the international jet set. In contrast, Sigurdur Óli's relationship is on the rocks and soon even his position in the CID is compromised: when he agrees to visit a couple of blackmailers as a favour to a friend he walks in just as a woman is beaten unconscious. When she dies, Sigurdur Óli has a murder investigation on his hands.

The evidence leads to debt collectors, extortionists, swinging parties. But when a chance link connects these enquiries to the activities of a group of young bankers, Sigurdur Óli finds himself investigating the very elite he had envied. Moving from the villas of Reykjavík's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, Black Skies is a superb story of greed, pride and murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers.

My Take

In retrospect, what strikes you about Indridason's books is how well crafted they are. The stories build layer on layer. They also demonstrate how small the Icelandic community actually is - although the residents don't necessarily know each other directly, they do belong to overlapping groups. Just as Iceland is a microcosm of the world's DNA, so it presents a laboratory of crime.

For the second title in a row Indridason's grumpy detective Erlendur has gone missing. (See OUTRAGE). This leaves his team to their own devices a bit, and Sigurdur Óli is not a team man at the best. A school reunion leads to him investigating a blackmailing case for an old school friend, his mother persuades him to look into the daily pilfering of an elderly friend's newspapers, and when a tramp comes looking for Erlendur he decides to follow up himself.

Sigurdur Óli is a very human detective who quite often makes mistakes and at least twice in BLACK SKIES he realises that he has woven events together in the wrong way and leapt to the wrong conclusions. Nor does he reveal to the rest of the team what he is up when he really does need help. He always seems to keep back little bits of information that he should be sharing. On the other hand he is what I think of as a fractal investigator, seeing small leads as worth investigating and that is partly what makes this book such a good read, as he goes off in directions the reader has not contemplated.

Having said that, I think I ready now for Erlendur to return, or to at least find out what has happened to him. His absence is a device that the author can surely sustain only for a couple of novels. In OUTRAGE it gave readers the opportunity to become better acquainted with Elinborg, and in BLACK SKIES with Sigurdur Óli. Of course, one of the advantages of this ploy is that a reader new to Indridason does not have to worry about not having read the earlier novels in the series.

There is a strong sense of setting in BLACK SKIES, not just the Icelandic setting, with characters known by single names, but also an explanation of the events that eventually lead to the global financial crisis and the collapse of the Icelandic economy. Like many contemporary crime fiction authors Indridason has embedded strong social comment in the novel.

My rating: 4.9

Other reviews to check

• Sarah @ CrimePieces
• Maxine @ EuroCrime
• Michael @ Crime Time
• Bernadette  @ ReactionstoReading

Other titles I have reviewed:
ARCTIC CHILL
5.0, HYPOTHERMIA
4.5, OPERATION NAPOLEON
4.6, OUTRAGE

Review: THE BAT, Jo Nesbo - audio book

• Format: audio book from Audible.com, narrated by Sean Barrett
• Length: 10 hours 43 minutes
• series: Harry Hole Book 1
• published in audio 2012
• Published in Norway 1997
• translated into English 2012 by Don Bartlett

Publishers Summary (Audible.com)

The thrilling first book in the best-selling Harry Hole series, never before published in English.

Harry is out of his depth.
Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can.
He's not supposed to get too involved.
When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will talk only to Harry.
He might just be the next victim.

Appearing in English for the first time, The Bat is the legendary first novel from the worldwide phenomenon Jo Nesbo.

My Take

Jo Nesbo was almost coy at Adelaide Writer's Week last year when he told us THE BAT would be released in English during 2012. It's setting alone, Harry Hole in Sydney investigating the murder of a Norwegian tourist, ensures that it is of interest to Australian crime fiction addicts, especially those who have followed Harry's progress in the later novels in the series. 

I wondered at the time whether his coyness was related to the Australian setting, whether he thought that Australian readers would be supercritical about comments made about our home by an "outsider". Or was he embarrassed because he thought we would find the story unpolished?

But how could that be? THE BAT was awarded with the most prestigious crime writing award in Norway, The Riverton Prize (Rivertonprisen) 1997 for Best Norwegian Crime Novel of the Year, as well as the premier crime writing award in Scandinavia, The Glass Key (Glasnyckeln) 1998 for Best Nordic Crime Novel of the Year.

Nesbo himself says
“Written in beginner’s euphoria. A story which bears the marks of where it was written, both in terms of geography and my life. Just recently I read it on the radio, and to some extent I was dreading all the mistakes new writers make, but what struck me was how fresh and bold it is.”

Most reviews point out how much THE BAT fills in Harry Hole's back story.
Maxine Clarke said "THE BAT is a serviceable, tense crime novel with intriguing hints of what is to come".
But reviewers are divided about whether they like this book as much as later titles, whether delaying its availability in English was a good idea or not.

For me, the Harry Hole we meet in THE BAT isn't really the same person as we meet in later titles, although the signs are there.
In addition there's a lot more evidence of research into the setting than we get in later titles, possibly because Nesbo felt he had to explain the setting more to his Norwegian readers. At times it reads as if he has picked up a book of Aboriginal legends, studied the map of Sydney very carefully, and read a few travelogues.
I had trouble accepting that the Sydney Police would give Harry Hole such powers in directing action in a crime investigation.

Nevertheless an enjoyable and worthwhile read for me.

My rating: 4.7

Other Reviews to consider

• Sarah at Crime Pieces
• Maxine at EuroCrime
• Bernadette at Reactions to Reading
• The Sunday Times

Reviews on MiP of other books in the Harry Hole series
NEMESIS
THE REDEEMER
5.0, THE SNOWMAN
4.8, THE LEOPARD
4.7, HEADHUNTERS - not a Harry Hole
4.7, PHANTOM  

Review: BABYLON, Camilla Ceder

• published in Swedish 2010
• translated by Marlaine Delargy 2012
• this edition in English published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2013
• ISBN 978-0-297-86669-5
• 293 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis ( Google Books)

Inspector Christian Tell and his team are called to the scene of a double murder. University lecturer Anne-Marie Karpov lies dead in her home, alongside her student and lover, Henrik.
The crime appears straightforward: Henrik's girlfriend Rebecca, a woman in therapy for her violent jealousy, had been spotted outside Karpov's flat, and her fingerprints are found on the door.

My Take

#2 in a police procedural series with central character Inspector Christian Tell. I reviewed the first, FROZEN MOMENT, in March 2011.

While this was a very readable book, it is not a stand-out for me, sharing many characteristics with the current batch of translated police procedurals: a middle aged police inspector who is a bit of a loner and whose team solves crimes more by intuition than by method. There's a new superintendent who puts the team offside right from the start and Inspector Tell feels challenged by him. Part of the book focusses on Tell's relationship with his younger girlfriend and a little of that went a long way.

The structure of the story is clever. At first the solution to the crime looks very straightforward but then the investigation turns up new evidence and it becomes obvious that the suspect could not have killed them. Other solutions are proposed and seem very plausible but don't quite fit the facts. Rebecca's flat is burgled, so then it seems that her dead partner Henrik holds the key.

For me, while I enjoyed the book, I had the feeling of being patiently led to the right answer.

My rating: 4.3

See a EuroCrime review by the later Maxine Clarke.

Review: ANNA MARKLIN'S FAMILY CHRONICLES, Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

• Published: Dec. 17, 2012
• Words: 76,073 (approximate)
• Language: British English
• ISBN: 9781301698127
• Format: Kindle (Smashwords or Amazon)
• Source: Review copy provided by the author

Synopsis (Smashwords)

A psychological mystery, set in Scandinavia.

This is the story of a young Danish woman, whose life is in a rut. Anna Storm is unemployed, her father is seriously ill, and her best friend and neighbour receives mysterious threats. Anna is a very ordinary antihero, so even when her friend dies unexpectedly, she keeps burying her head in the sand.

Then she finds her Swedish grandmother's old notebooks, however. Anna is spellbound by the beautiful drawings and the sweet story of her grandmother's everyday life. Finally, she has found a worthy project to engage in. As she reads her grandmother's words, it dawns on her that the books are not suitable for children at all, but that the sinister story which is hidden between the lines may give Anna a much needed push. Anna wakes up - but is it too late? 

My Take

Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen cleverly juggles several plot lines in her first "serious" crime fiction novel.
The novel begins with a Prologue which is in fact some text pulled from the middle of the novel. I must confess that at first this text confused me just a little. You can in fact read this Prologue online here and on Amazon.

Chapter One then jumps back in time about 2 months. 
The first of the novel's threads is about Anna Storm's neighbour Karin who appears to go missing on a regular basis. Anna is not unduly alarmed at first because she and Karin have been good friends for so long. But she becomes concerned when Karin is gone for a week.

The second thread is Anna's relationship with her parents. Her father has refused to give her much detail about his side of the family until now. But now he is seriously ill and seems to understand Anna's need to know her family history. Anna is unemployed and generally has a bit of time on her hands and so goes off to Sweden to find the village her father's family came from.  Anna learns that there is quite a bit of sinister mystery attached to her father's family history.

The third thread is a journal written at the beginning of the twentieth century by Anna Marklin, Anna Storm's father's Farmor. Excerpts from the journal begin to appear in the novel even before Anna Storm becomes aware that it exists.

The fourth thread is that of Anna's marriage to Lars. 

Although Jakobsen is a Danish author, this novel is written in English with a few Danish words thrown in for good measure. Hymns and poetry are translated for the reader by the author and a glossary is provided of some Danish terms at the beginning of the novel.

There are at least two mysteries to be solved and the author does well to keep us on tenterhooks and not to reveal too much.  

ANNA MARKLIN'S FAMILY CHRONICLES is self-published and only available as an e-book. The Smashwords version caters for all formats at $3.99 while the Amazon one is of course for your Kindle at $2.99.

My rating: 4.3

I've also reviewed
4.4, CANDIED CRIME
4.1, LIQUORICE TWISTS
4.2, THE COSY KNAVE  

About the Author

About the author   Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen was born in Denmark in 1961. She works as a teacher, and in her spare time she reads and writes crime fiction in Danish and English.   

One of her stories appeared in "Discount Noir", a collection of flash fiction stories, in 2010 (editors Steve Weddle & Patricia Abbott).   In 2011 she published a couple of short stories plus two anthologies of flash fiction, "CANDIED CRIME, DJ's Daim Stories volume I" and "LIQUORICE TWISTS, DJ's Daim Stories volume II".   
Her first English novel, THE COSY KNAVE  (alternative title "Murder deLight") is a humorous and cosy mystery which takes place in Yorkshire.