Review: The Bat by Jo Nesbø

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Keywords: crime fiction, police procedural, Norwegian crime writer, Australia, Australian Aborigines

This debut of police Norwegian detective Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-Leh according to Harry) was published in Norway in 1997 but didn't appear in English until 2012. It is set in Australia, not Norway.

Harry is sent to Sydney to observe the investigation into the rape and strangulation murder of a minor Norwegian celebrity, Inger Holter. He is teamed up with an Aboriginal detective, Andrew Kensington. Harry is supposed to merely observe but that doesn't last long, fortunately for the reader. The investigation is following along the usual procedural lines: how did she die, who did she know, was she close to anyone,  what were her last, movements. Harry meets a Swedish bartender, Birgitta, who worked with the murdered woman and they develop a personal relationship outside the investigation. Pretty soon a pattern begins to emerge. Other victims are identified that fit the current case. Is a serial killer at work. What ties them together? They are all young blond white women.

My rating: pretty good but not remarkable. I like it enough to keep reading in the series.

I enjoyed The Bat but, for me, it wasn't a gripping, can't put down thriller. I might have felt different in 1997 but today, not so much. It is your standard police procedural with a central protagonist with a flaw. In this case, Harry is an alcoholic though currently sober.

Nesbø is classed as writing Nordic Noir but I wouldn't put The Bat anywhere near noir which is why it isn't one of my keywords. A book like The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson is noir. The Bat is a police procedural. It has none of the darkness and brutality that I associate with noir. I'll see if my opinion changes as I read more of the series.

I think the investigation is layed out well and I don't see the conclusion as pulled out of  nowhere. True, Harry does get the killer to reveal all but at least it wasn't in a "I'll answer all your questions before I kill you" setting.

I'm sort of torn on the Australian setting. Having several characters describe the treatment of Aboriginal Australians could have been a problem if it tended toward a data dump making it more of a history lesson. Fortunately Nesbø pulls off this "look at a culture through the eyes of a foreigner" by working it into the story naturally and not as a lecture.

POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD

Something happens during the course of the investigation that give Harry an excuse to fall off the wagon and begin an alcohol fueled downward spiral. This is painful to read but wasn't a problem. What did bother me is one of the Australian detectives sits Harry down at lunch, tells him he needs to straighten up because only he has the insights to solve the case and BANG, Harry is sober, clear-headed and taking care of business.  Prior to that he was a puking, sodden mess. Just a little bit too quick a turn-around.