I have gotten into the wonderful habit of reading during my hour lunch breaks at work. The only “downfall” of this is that I read through my book list too quickly, and I have to find others. Because of this during my Summer Book Exchange (slight self promotion) I asked for new crime novels, and mentioned Jo Nesbo. I got the first Harry Hole book The Bat and was…underwhelmed.
I didn’t hate the book by any means, but I couldn’t get into it too much. The character seemed a bit shallow and I didn’t forsee the twist ending, but I saw the “give into vices” section a mile-and-a-half away.
Has anyone read beyond this first book and can recommend me keeping on it? Apparently the ones released in the US first to critical acclaim were later books in the series where Nesbo found his niche, so would it behoove me to read The Cockroach, and Redbreast? Would I miss a ton if I just skipped to Redbreast?
Any help, opinions, suggestions are welcome!
I’ve read them all, except for The Bat. The first book to be translated and marketed in the States was The Redbreast, I believe. So I started there and continued right on up to The Police. Later, I went back and read The Cockroach. I’m glad it turned out that way because the later books were much better.
I like the character, and the Norway setting gives the books a different feeling and sensibility than everything else in the genre. My advice would be to skip The Cockroach and jump right in to the so-called Oslo Trilogy (The Redbreast, Nemesis and The Devil’s Star.)
I think if that’s the case I might as well read Cockroach so that I can maintain continuity
Apologies for being late to the thread but I wanted to wait until I finished The Redeemer before posting. I’m not sure where it comes in the series, I was given it as a Christmas present. I found it hard to get into at first due to the way the scene kept changing without warning, no doubt a clever literary device but I found it a bit irritating. However, once that was over with I thought the storyline and characterisation were decent. If anything I could have done with a bit more detail. So at the moment my view is that I would certainly read another book by Nesbo if it fell into my lap, but I’m not going to go out of my way to buy more. Comparisons with Frederick Forsyth are justified but Nesbo doesn’t reach that level (though I’m biased as an Englishman and Forsyth fan). There were also a (very) few instances of slightly awkward translations that pulled you out of the story momentarily, but I guess that’s almost inevitable.
So now that my thread has been bumped…
I went out and bought The Redbreast. There was a strong part of me that almost read Cockroach since I love continuity, but I just couldn’t get excited over the premise. I figured I knew the character enough from the first one to call it a day. I bought it and an interesting sounding book called The Dinosaur Feather. I ended up reading that book first and actually just finished it a couple days ago (I give it a solid B+ and it was literally unlike any crime novel I have ever read). I cracked open Redbreast yesterday.