Cockroaches - Jo Nesbo

   1987 (in Norwegian), 2013 (in English); 437 pages.  Book 2 (out of 12) in the “Harry Hole” series.  New Author? :No.  Genres : Crime Fiction; Mystery Thriller; Thailand.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s a delicate diplomatic situation.  The Norwegian ambassador to Thailand has been murdered.  Someone stuck a knife into his back.

 

    Unfortunately, it didn’t happen at the Embassy, nor the Ambassador’s residence.  It took place instead in a seedy motel room.  The kind you rent to “meet” a cute little hooker.  So says the motel manager who rented him the room.  So says the hooker who discovered the corpse.

 

    The Norwegian government has decided to send Detective Harry Hole to Bangkok to investigate.  His primary mission is not necessarily to solve the murder; that’s neither here nor there.  Rather, it’s to make sure that the embarrassing details of the case are covered up and kept out of the newspapers.  And they’ve drummed that repeatedly into Harry’s head.

 

    Unfortunately, Harry has a history of having trouble obeying orders from higher-ups.

 

What’s To Like...

    Cockroaches is the second book in Jo Nesbo’s fantastic Harry Hole series.  Book One, The Bat, is set in Australia, (and reviewed here); this time Harry and the reader are treated to a trip to Thailand.  It was fifteen years before Cockroaches was translated into English.  By that we mean “The Queen’s English”, not the American variant, so we have strange spellings such as kilometres, defenceless, and aluminium; and weird terms such as torches (flashlights), windscreens (windshields) and hoovering (vacuuming).

 

    Many years ago, I spent three days in Thailand, and I can attest that Jo Nesbo does a fantastic job in capturing the “feel” of Bangkok here: the heat, the humidity, the tuk-tuks, the unbelievable amount and diversity of the city’s daily traffic, and the national pride that Thais have in being the only Southeast Asian country that was never a European colony.  It’s all real, even the ubiquitous pimps showing foreigners pictures of their "working girls".

 

    The Mystery aspect of the story is done equally well.  It quickly becomes clear that this is not merely a “call-girl tryst gone bad", and it was fun tagging along with Harry as he doggedly – and against his superiors’ wishes – tries to get to the bottom of the murder.  Some key clues pop up along the way, but properly interpreting them is quite challenging, and a couple of them are red herrings intended to mislead.

 

    In addition to the British-English terms, we get to learn some words and phrases in both Thai and Norwegian, and I always like that.  One of the latter was “faen” a Norse cussword, which I’ll let you google to find out what it means.  Harry’s musical tastes are impeccable: at one point he wears a Joy Division T-shirt, and he also makes reference to the obscure prog-rock band Camel, whom I greatly like.  He also attends his first quasi-legal cockfight, which was enlightening for me as well.

 

    Everything builds to an excellent ending that’s full of both excitement and twists.  Harry’s keen crime-solving logic saves the day; to be honest I still didn’t have a clue who did it when he broke the case.  All the storylines are seemingly tied up, although there’s a teaser on the last page to make you think twice about that.  Cockroaches is both a standalone novel and part of a series.

 

Excerpts...

    ”His career has ended in a cul-de-sac.  He came from some job in Defence, but at some point there were a couple too many “buts” by his name.”

    “Buts?”

    “Haven’t you heard the way Ministry people talk about one another? ‘He’s a good diplomat, but he drinks, but he likes women too much’ and so on.  What comes after the ‘buts’ is a lot more important than what comes before; it determines how far you can get in the department.  That’s why there are so many sanctimonious mediocrities at the top.”  (pg. 117)

 

    “What is it about you Thais and heights?  According to Tonje Wiig I’m the third Norwegian to be thrown out of a house this week.”

    “An old mafia modus operandi.  They’d rather do that than plug someone with lead.  If the police find a guy beneath a window they cannot rule out the possibility that he might have fallen accidentally.  Some money changes hands, the case is shelved without anyone being directly criticised and everyone’s happy.  Bullet holes complicate matters.”  (pg. 130)

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Ludic (adj.) : showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness.

Others: Alopecia (n.); Bodger (n.); Trainers (n., shoes).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 3,800 ratings and 1,478 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.73*/5, based on 50,252 ratings and 3,018 reviews.

 

“Who on earth pays half a million for a tape recorder?”  (pg. 146)

    There’s not much to gripe about in Cockroaches.  Be aware that this is a gritty, police-noir series, so there’s a fair amount of cussing (18 instances in the first 20%), violence, and adult situations, including one roll-in-the-hay.

 

    Despite all its positive attributes, Bangkok is also known as a center for child-pornography and pedophilia.  Both raise their ugly heads in Cockroaches.  Don’t read this book if this is going to upset you.

 

    About the only other thing I can quibble about is the choice of title.  I only recall two instances of cockroaches making the scene, and neither was important to the story.  I think I’m happier that they didn’t have a greater impact.

 

    9 Stars.  I still maintain that the best police-procedural murder-mysteries are written by Scandinavian authors: Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo, Jo Nesbo, and others.  Cockroaches does nothing to dissuade me from that lofty opinion.