Harry Hole? Well just think Jack Reacher and add a little. Not to the character. No! Harry and Jack are birds of a feather but the writing of Jo Nesbo and Lee Childs are not. Well not entirely exactly. Jo edges slightly ahead in the literary race.
I’ve just finished “Police”, Jo Nesbo’s 2013 crime thriller. Like the Lee Child’s thriller “Die Trying”, which I read earlier, it is gripping and everything you would want in a Xmas read. These sort of books grab you by the collar and hoist you, by the seat of your pants, across that imaginary finishing line. And as you lie there exhausted, panting and happy, I will admit, that it takes a while before the creaks and cracks in the plot start to surface like unwanted weeds in a carefully tended garden.
How did that unfit older chap, with the wheeze, effortlessly exhume the body and take the wizened, desiccated and mummified corpse clear across Oslo and chain it up in a bar and set fire to it? Are corpses so flammable? Or so invisibly transportable? But, it’s all perfectly reasonable in a Harry Hole book, as it was in that Jack Reacher book when Jack, fired by anger, just took a shovel and dug a six foot deep grave in an afternoon in hard shale to bury his comrade. No sweat. Could have done it myself.
I acknowledge that Jo writes a more complex story than Lee. Now that I have read a couple of Jo Nesbo’s books, I can see the clues coming. The warning thump-thump-thump of the garbage truck, crushing rubbish as it trundles on up the street to the house that Harry is about to storm to save the woman, who, we all know, must be in the garage bin patiently waiting for the garage truck.
But just knowing the magic trick doesn’t detract from skill or verve of the magician. And, of course, in the heat of the moment, we are all suckers, waiting for the pigeon to vanish and shocked and delighted when the rabbit appears.
At the End of the Day 