The Redbreast - Jo Nesbo

I haven't posted in a while because I've had a summer so busy I barely had time to read for pleasure, and because I ran out of new books! Usually I have a stack waiting, but this summer I didn't have new things handy to read. Last week I picked up a paperback at the supermarket of a title I had heard good things about - The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo.

Jo Nesbo is a Norwegian author, and his detective, Harry Hole, is a Norwegian cop. One good thing about the publication and popularization of "The Girl With Dragon Tattoo" series is that more attention is being paid to Scandinavian writers, with many of them now being marketed as "the next Stieg Larsson". None of them really are, but there are some decent books that I have found this way and The Redbreast is one of them.

It begins when Harry Hole, stationed along the motorcade route of the visiting President of the United States, shoots a man in a tollbooth near his checkpoint. Is the man an assassin, or a Secret Service agent who the Norwegian police have not been told about?

As a result of the shooting, Harry gets "promoted" - to get him out of the way, and to show the general public that the police force is standing behind him. It is at his new position as an Inspector that Harry begins to investigate a series of murders that lead back into the history of Norway in World War II.

Not surprisingly, the background is unfamiliar to American readers and takes some adjustment, but Nesbo works things in quite smoothly, and one can get the gist of the culture, the geography, and the relationships without being all that familiar with Scandinavian culture. I especially liked the development of Harry's relationship with a colleague who is a single mother and the dance they do to become comfortable with getting to know one another. It is one of the more realistic depictions I have seen.

I see a couple other of his novels are available in English, so there is something else to look forward to.