Cockroaches: The Second Inspector Harry Hole Novel Author: Jo Nesbo | Language: English | ISBN:
0345807154 | Format: EPUB
Cockroaches: The Second Inspector Harry Hole Novel Description
From Booklist
With the publication of this second novel in the Harry Hole series, all 10 Hole novels are now available in the U.S. It’s disconcerting for fans to read the series out of order (we know what demons await the beleaguered Harry), but, that aside, this is a compelling, hard-edged thriller that can stand on its own. It wasn’t until the third novel, Redbreast (2007), that the series took on its classic Scandinavian noir feel; in the opener (The Bat, 2013), Hole was sent to Australia to solve a crime involving a Norwegian, and here he’s on the road again, this time to Thailand, where the Norwegian ambassador has been found dead in a Bangkok brothel. The plot is satisfyingly twisty, with Harry wandering through the city’s notorious red-light district in search of clues and tempted by the booze and drugs that will derail him throughout the series. But we also see both Harry’s almost Holmesian flair for deductive reasoning and the sensitivity that makes him vulnerable. Don’t look to the Scandinavians for read-alikes this time; rather, try John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitpleecheep series, also set in Bangkok’s morally ambiguous demimonde. --Bill Ott
Review
"Nesbø never lets a page go by without making characters and situations vivid."
--Houston Chronicle
"The world is dark and frozen, according to Nordic noir, and so is the human heart.
But it's the magic Nesbø works with the genre's tropes that matters. . . . [He] might be my favorite of the lot."
--Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune
"Satisfyingly twisty. . . . A compelling, hard-edged thriller."
--Booklist
“Excellent . . . the most popular among [Nesbø’s] earlier novels and one that casts a cold eye on the reality of expatriate life of some Europeans in Asia.”
—The Irish Independent
“The complex narrative and large dramatis personae are handled with steely authority . . . The picturesque seediness of Bangkok and Thailand turns out to be Harry Hole's natural element, with Nesbo plumping his hero down in a very non-Norwegian setting.”
—The Independent (UK)
Praise for Jo Nesbø
“Nesbø writes like an angel. As in Lucifer.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Harry Hole is fast becoming one of the planet’s favorite detectives. And his demons are almost as legendary as his observational and analytical skills.”
—The Mirror (UK)
“Nesbø explores the darkest criminal minds with grim delight and puts his killer where you least expect to find them. . . . His novels are maddeningly addictive.”
—Vanity Fair
See all Editorial Reviews
- Series: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original
- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (February 11, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0345807154
- ISBN-13: 978-0345807151
- Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
English speakers were first introduced to the work of Norwegian author Jo Nesbo and his damaged main character Harry Hole, in 2006, with the publication of The Redbreast, the third book in the Harry Hole series, a novel so good that it won the award for Best Norwegian Crime Novel Ever Written, as chosen by Norwegian Book Clubs. Now, after eight enormously successful novels in that series, Nesbo’s publishers have published the first two novels of the series, The Bat, and Cockroaches, written when Nesbo was a much less accomplished novelist than he has become in the ensuing fifteen years.
In Cockroaches, Detective Harry Hole is chosen by the Norwegian Foreign Office to go to Thailand to investigate the murder of Norway’s ambassador to Thailand, who has been found in a brothel with an elaborate old knife in his back. Hole himself is a psychological mess, an alcoholic trying to stay sober, and he has no interest in going to Thailand, even for a short time, to investigate this murder. He suspects he has been chosen because they expect him to fail so the foreign office can close the case without having to reveal nasty and embarrassing details.
In Bangkok, Harry gets started on the case and quickly discovers that the ambassador was a practitioner of many perversions, including paedophilia and child pornography. The knife used to kill him belonged to the most powerful heroin dealer in history, who now finances most of the new hotels in Burma and manages the opium trade in the north of Thailand. In addition, the ambassador is addicted to gambling and is indebted to loan sharks.
I haven't read any of Jo Nesbo's detective novels in the Harry Hole series so was keen to read this one because it is #2 in the series and I always try to read a series in order if I can. All of the later books in the series have been translated from Norwegian ahead of this book so there was probably a clue that this was not one of his better books.
Harry Hole is a complex but flawed character, a skilled detective and investigator who thinks outside the box but personally a very troubled individual who hits the bottle hard when he is not working.
The Norwegian Ambassador to Thailand, Atle Molnes, is found stabbed with an ancient oriental knife in a seedy Motel, come brothel on the outskirts of Bangkok. Molnes has been a senior Christian Democratic politician who was given the posting by his close political friend who had recently become Prime Minister. An urgent meeting between influential people in the Prime Minister's Department, Foreign Affairs and the Crime Squad quickly agree that the matter must be investigated quickly without undue public attention. They decide to send one investigator to help the local police with their investigations. Harry Hole is their unanimous selection based on his recent performance in solving a case in Sydney.
After quickly sobering up, Hole flies to Bangkok to meet his local counterparts. Nesbo does a great job in describing conditions is Bangkok, the heat, traffic, noise, bars etc., the life of an ex-pat and the diplomatic community, and the way the local police operate.
Hole quickly gets to know the Embassy staff, the Ambassador's wife, Hilde, and her teenage daughter and several key Norwegian ex-patriots in Bangkok.
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