Rødstrupe [book review]

In the common room of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Warwick [same building as the Department of Statistics], there is a box for book exchanges and I usually take a look at each visit for a possible exchange. In October, I thus picked Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast in exchange for maybe The Rogue Male. However, it stood on my office bookcase for another three months before I found time to read this early (2000) instalment in the Harry Hole series. With connections with the earliest Redeemer.

This is a fairly good if not perfect book, with a large opening into Norway’s WW II history and the volunteers who joined Nazi Germany to fight on the Eastern Front. And the collaborationist government of Vidkin Quissling. I found most interesting this entry into this period and the many parallels with French history at the same time. (To the point that quisling is now a synonym for collaborator, similar to pétainiste in French.) This historical background has some similarities with Camilla Lackberg‘s Hidden Child I read a while ago but on a larger and broader scale. Reminiscences and episodes from 1940-1944 take a large part of the book. And rightly so, as the story during WW II explains a lot of the current plot. While this may sound like an easy story-line, the plot also dwells a lot on skinheads and neo-Nazis in Olso. While Hole’s recurrent alcoholism irks me in the long run (more than Rebus‘ own alcohol problem, for some reason!), the construction of the character is quite well-done, along with a reasonable police force, even though both Hole’s inquest and the central crime of the story are stretching on and beyond belief, with too many coincidences. And a fatal shot by the police leads to very little noise and investigation, in a country where the murder rate is one of the lowest in the World and police officers do not carry guns. Except in Nesbø’s novels! Still, I did like the novel to the point of spending most of a Sunday afternoon on it, with the additional appeal of most of it taking place in Oslo. Definitely a page turner.