A lot of big crime writers coming out of Scandinavia these days, the most high-profile at the moment being the late Stieg Larsson with his celebrated Millennium Trilogy. That’s the one that begins with the already-filmed The Girl With The Snake Tattoo. I read that one and thought it was okay, but not great. Kind of formulaic with a heavy-handed feminism that didn’t add much.
Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series is not as big and cinematic but it has a much more vital feel – less author, more characters. The one I read was Nemesis in which the alcoholic Oslo police detective gets himself in trouble when he takes up with an old flame while his new flame is out of town. It’s constructed more like a TV show than a movie, with multiple plots and interesting through-lines for the characters that extend into the books before and after. What I admired most about it was the construction, the air of realism mixed with very clever mystery novel-style solutions.
Very entertaining and smart and I may read more.
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