One of the quirks of the "boom" in Scandinavian crime fiction in the past decade or so has been that a number of authors were translated from roughly the middle of their series, rather than from the beginning.
Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole series is one of these. The first two novels to see English release were the fifth and third of the series (in that order, somewhat eccentrically), which for a while meant that Hole's first two outings were only available in Scandinavian languages. So keen was I to read them that I'd actually begun to look into obtaining the Swedish translations of the Norwegian originals when finally word came out that they had been translated into English and would be released.
These two novels are very atypical in relation to the rest of Hole's exploits, in that the action takes place almost entirely overseas. The Bat (released in 2012, originally published as Flaggermusmannen in 1997) sees Hole investigating a murder in Australia, while he's sent to Bangkok in Cockroaches (2013, originally published in 1998 as Kakerlakkene). The brilliantly-evoked Oslo atmosphere of the later novels is missing in favour of the more exotic - at least for a Norwegian - setting.
The Australia of The Bat is, frankly, a bit off-key. I can't be so sure about Cockroaches' Bangkok, although Nesbø does manage to work in some suitable period detail - this is the Bangkok of the Asian Financial Crisis, where the baht is incredibly unstable and the economic boom Thailand had experienced is screeching to a halt.
Hole, too, is a different man. His complicated personal life is nowhere to be seen, beyond his sister's Down Syndrome. This is years before his fateful meeting with Rakel and her son Oleg, and even a long time before he develops his complicated friendships with such enduring characters as Ellen Gjelten, Beate Lønn, and the rest of the Oslo Crime Squad. All things considered, he's actually rather deferential to Bjarne Møller when ordered to fly to Bangkok, although the perceptive reader will notice that his first meeting with Tom Waaler doesn't exactly set them up to be bosom friends.
Hole is sent to Bangkok in order to investigate the murder of the Norwegian ambassador, Atle Molnes. Molnes, it emerges, was found dead in what may or may not be a brothel (one of the characters makes reference to acts which aren't quite legal or illegal, and that seems to be the world in which this hotel exists), by a prostitute dressed - somewhat incongruously - as Tonya Harding.
Aside from the general desire to avoid a scandal, as Molnes has political connections to the Christian Democrats in Norway, Hole's mission is to resolve the murder as quickly as possible. Of course, as those of us who know the byzantine ways Hole's mind works can probably already guess, "as quickly as possible" is just not going to happen. Secrets and lies get in the way, both at the embassy and among the ambassador's family, and Hole's famous instincts are put to the test on several occasions.
Cockroaches is an improvement over the more linear plotting of The Bat, but it's clear that Nesbø was still finding his feet as a novelist in this early Hole outing. The multi-faceted plots familiar to readers in the more recent novels are simply not there, although some political and financial corruption does surface as Hole investigates.
Overall, though, there's still not the abiding sense of character that Nesbø would later develop. Hole is a sort of "everyman with advantages", rather than the complex and deeply flawed figure he would soon become. There's a sense here that he could be Sam Spade, simply transported forward in time and given a new nationality.
More broadly, one could question whether this is truly "Scandi-crime" anyway, since it takes place in Bangkok. While it touches on the social considerations that genre tends to, the nature of the plot makes it perhaps more "Thai noir" than anything else.
Two and a half stars. Fans of the series will love it, but it's not Nesbø at his best.
