Monday, February 4, 2019

The Bat - Jo Nesbo


    1997; 369 pages (English translation from the Norwegian in 2012 by Don Bartlett).  Book One  (out of 11, and soon to be 12) in the Inspector Harry Hole series.  New Author? : No.  Murder-Mystery; Police Procedural; Norwegian Crime Noir.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    It’s undoubtedly the longest business trip in Harry Hole’s career with the Oslo Crime Squad.  All the way from the northwestern European country of Norway to the tip of southeastern Australia, with only one single plane-change in Bahrain.  That's a lot of sitting.  Harry's back was killing him when he finally made it to Sydney.

    Let’s just hope it’s not a wasted trip.  A young, pretty, minor Norwegian TV celebrity has been brutally raped and murdered in Sydney, and Harry has been sent to “assist” in the case.

    Understandably, the Australian police force are somewhat lukewarm about having some foreigner looking over their shoulders.  The Head of the local Crime Squad, Neil McCormack, immediately puts Harry on a short leash.  Harry will do no independent investigating and he will report any and all thoughts or findings he has about the case at once to McCormack.

    Ah, but Harry has a history for bucking orders from his superiors.  You can bet your sweet didgeridoo that he’s not going to play by McCormack’s rules.

    Because there wouldn’t be much of a story if he did.

What’s To Like...
    The Bat is the first book in Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, and, since Harry's already a veteran cop, there is a fair amount of time spent on his backstory, which contains a fair amount of uncomfortable baggage.  He conforms to the standard, anti-hero, police-procedural protagonist – he’s jaded, somewhat burnt out, drinks and smokes a lot, gets into bar fights, and  doesn’t follow the wishes of higher-ups well.  As a reader, I’m okay with that.

    I liked the way the setting, Sydney and its immediate environs, was handled.  I felt like the author had spent some time there, instead of just pulling data from the Wikipedia article.  And for a change, the Sydney opera house doesn’t play a part in the story.

    The translation is written in English, not American, which means you have car “boots”, things are “posh”, the carpet gets “hoovered”, and you use a “torch” to see your way around in the dark.  You also learn the proper way way pronounce Harry’s last name: “HOO-leh”.   I naturally assumed it was a one-syllable, long-O word; and most of the Aussies he meets just call him “Harry Holy”.  I also enjoyed the Aussieisms used: “fair dinkum”, “drongo”, and a couple others listed below in the Kewlest New Words section.

     Besides the main storyline questions – who killed Inger Holter?, was it a serial killer?, did it involve drugs? – the book examines the more serious themes of: the deep-seated prejudice against aboriginals, and the self-destructive woes of being an alcoholic.  The pacing is brisk, which will always be a challenge when writing a crime-mystery tale of 350+ pages.  Jo Nesbo works a number of aboriginal folk lore tales into the tale, as well as some hookers, flashers, and the Sydney gay community.

    This is my second Harry Hole book (the other one is reviewed here), and I was once again impressed with the author’s wit and writing skills.  The fight scene (pages 132-134) was particularly fun to read.  Harry Hole books are for adults – there’s lots of cussing, gruesome murders, and oodles of sex, drugs, and booze.  The Bat is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.  There are 57 chapters covering 369 pages, so if it’s time to turn off the lights and go to sleep, you're probably seven pages or less from a chapter break.

Kewlest New Word...
Fair Dinkum (phrase, Aussieism) : used to emphasize or seek confirmation of the genuineness or truth of something.
Others : Kip (v.; a Britishism); Twig (v.; a Gaelicism); Spliff (n.); Snaffling (v.); Squiz (v.; a Britishism).


Excerpts...
    “Mr. White, a woman whom you knew well and with whom you had an intimate relationship has just been murdered.  What you might or might not feel about that is not our business.  However, as you are no doubt aware, we are looking for a murderer, and unless you try to help us this very minute, we will be forced to have you taken to the police station in Sydney.”
    “I’m going to Sydney anyway so if that means you’ll pay for my plane ticket, fine by me.”  (pg. 71)

    “Where do you think (he) will end up?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Do you think his soul will go up or down?”
    Toowoomba wore a serious expression.  “I’m a simple man, Harry.  I don’t know much about that kind of thing, and I don’t know much about souls.  But I do know a couple of things about (him), and if there’s something up there, and if it’s beautiful souls they want that’s where he belongs.”  He smiled.  “But if there’s anything down there, I think that’s where he’d prefer to be.  He hated boring places.”  (pg. 288)


”We’re living in Sydney, the only town in the world where people are closet heteros.”  (pg. 175)
    It helps to realize that The Bat is a Police Procedural, not a Whodunit.  You can try to solve the murder(s) by walking alongside Harry, and you might even catch some critical clues that Harry later kicks himself for not recognizing sooner.  But the information learned from those clues is not given until Harry announces the identity of the perpetrator.

    That occurs on page 322, at which point, the final fifty pages switches from “who did it” to how are we going to nab em”.  The finale has an obligatory chase scene, is suitably exciting, and finishes off with an ending that, IMO, is just a bit over the top.

    Some Amazon reviewers give The Bat low ratings, most of them saying that it’s one of the weakest books in the series.  This was only my second Jo Nesbo book, so I don’t feel qualified to comment one way or another on that.  For me, The Bat was an exciting book that kept me turning the pages.

    8½ Stars.   Scandinavian authors kick butt when it comes to writing murder-mystery stories.  Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and the team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo are all masters in this genre.  And now Jo Nesbo can be added to that list.

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