Scandinavian Crime Book Review: Cockcoaches by Jo Nesbø

Cockroaches is the second in Nesbø's Harry Hole series of Norwegian crime fiction. If you are new to the series, you should start with The Bat. Events in that book are referenced here.

So far, neither book about a Norwegian police detective has been set in Norway. Where The Bat took place in Australia, Cockroaches is set in Bangkok Thailand.

Warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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After the events in The Bat, Harry is once again drinking heavily. The ambassador to Thailand has been murdered in a motel/brothel and against all common sense, Harry is dispatched to assist in the investigation. In Thailand, Harry is assigned to work with homicide investigator Liz Crumley who is half Thai, half American. Liz is direct and no nonsense and sees Harry for the drunk he is right away. With Harry's arrival, the investigation gets underway and Harry quickly establishes,—a drunk he might be— that he still knows how to assess a crime scene. There are lots of twists and turns and dead-ends dealings with the small community of Norwegians in Thailand as the story heads toward the resolution.

I enjoyed Cockroaches more than The Bat and the police procedural aspects are generally pretty solid. Nesbø does a good job integrating cultural differences into the story and Harry working with a team of Thai police investigators is handled well and with some humor.

There are aspects of the story that annoyed me. One of the biggest are inaccuracies in describing firearms. Nesbø goes to some effort to specify actual actual hand guns, by model, used by the police but then introduces details that could be easily verified. A police officer is describe pulling his 33mm sidearm. In actuality, this would be a cannon and not a hand gun. He also describes the smell of cordite after a gun has been fired. Cordite hasn't been used as a propellant since WWII. Cordite is not the same thing as gunpowder and looks more like thin spaghetti noodles. Actual cordite would smell more like nail polish remover, ie acetone.

Harry seems to be able to turn off his alcoholism at will. In the interests of the investigation, Harry stops drinking. Bang. No more. While he is tempted, he confines himself to water and Coke. I don't have any actual experience here but is it likely that someone can go from drunk to sober overnight?

The big climax was particularly disappointing to me and I hate the way Liz Crumley's role was handled. I suppose it is a legitimate technique to go against the way a character has been developed but it wasn't necessary in this case.

The whodunit and howdunit parts are pretty good but the presentation left me very dissatisfied. I said I would give a series five books before I abandon it but if the third Harry Hole doesn't grip me I'm done with it.

I rate this C+ to B-.