Reviews

Crvendać by Jo Nesbø

lagarrett's review against another edition

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3.0

Good police procedural set in Oslo - the usual minor problems of mixing up names that aren't familiar, but some good characters and story line (in fact several story lines woven together).

eldercrone's review against another edition

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5.0

Easy to read, interesting premise, and lots of Norway. Enjoy this series of Detective stories.

timothycapehart's review against another edition

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2.0

Sadly this was a total slog...I LOVED the first two in the series. I can't imagine coming to this one first (as most American readers in the past had to) and continuing with the series. The flashbacks to 1944 and the retread (from the first two) of the "don't be a woman in Harry's life" subplot just left me cold. I HOPE #4 will be an improvement...if it isn't it will be my last. I can't believe this one won so much acclaim...perhaps it's just me.

c_a_w's review against another edition

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3.0

Pretty good. Everything comes together at the end as per...

charles__'s review against another edition

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3.0

Third book in the Scandinavian-noir sub-genre Harry Hole series set in Oslo, in which a Norwegian police detective investigates a Norwegian, WWII Waffen-SS-veteran turned assassin.

description
Oslo and the Oslofjord

My audio edition was about seventeen hours long. A dead tree copy would be about 370 pages. The original Norwegian copyright was 2000. English translation was performed in 2006. My audio edition had a 2011 copyright.

Jo Nesbø is a Norwegian mystery novelist and musician amongst other things. He has more than 20-books published, in both several series and standalone. This was the third book in the author’s Harry Hole (last name pronounced Whole-Eee in Norwegian) series. Currently there are 12 books in the series. This was also the 5th or 6th book I’ve read by the author. The most recent being Cockroaches (Harry Hole, #2) (my review).

It’s not necessary, but recommended that the previous books in the series, particularly The Bat be read before this one. Otherwise, some of the, long-term, series plotlines with Hole will not be easily understood. Note that unlike previous books in the series this book sets-up for future books.

TL;DR Summary

In the story, Harry Hole, the somewhat damaged and alcoholic, Norwegian police detective from the Oslo Crime Squad is back on his feet, dried-out, and functioning as one of the department’s best with the able assistance of his new female partner. Through an unfortunate accident, he’s promoted out of the Crime Squad and into the Norwegian version of a madogiwazoku position with the National Security Service. You can’t keep a good detective down. Hole sniffs out a potential assassin, who becomes real. This leads him onto a complicated series of murders, one personally tragic; into the contemporary Norwegian fascist community; and onto the trail of a ghost WWII, Norwegian, Waffen-SS, veteran turned assassin.

Nesbø goes to great lengths to obfuscate the perp. Between the: Norwegian names, withholding the motive and the real opportunity till late in the story their identity eluded me until Nesbø’s reveal. The story has Nesbø’s traditional theme’s of: government bureaucratic perfidy, Women are Wiser, and Norwegian stodgy conservatism. Unlike all previous books in the series, this story takes place in Hole’s, native Oslo. It also makes use of flashback scenes, and more than one POV, writing techniques not found in previous books in the series. The flashbacks were to Norwegian involvement in WWII—an interesting bit of edutainement. However, it contains more police procedural and technical errors than previous books. In general, this is the most complex story in the series to-date, and requires concentration to follow.

The Somewhat Longer Review

After reading Cockroaches, I had every intention of reading this book. So many books, so little time? Oddly, I had this book in hardback on the midden heap of my TBR pile, when I was gifted the audiobook, by a rabid Harry Hole enthusiast. I listened to it, because I could multi-task with it. Because this book was more complex than its predecessors, it would have been better served with eye-reading vs. ear-reading.

The story contained: sex, drugs and violence. The sex was not graphic, but not completely of the fade to black category. All sex was heteronormative. Note that coercive sex was a plotline. Substance abuse almost exclusively alcohol. Soft and hard-core drug usage was mentioned. The effects and influence of alcohol abuse were a major plot element. (Hole’s an alcoholic—it’s a series plotline.) Violence was physical, blunt-object and firearms. Note that violence against women was a plot line. All forms of violence and the resulting trauma were moderately graphic.

Nesbø is a musician. Along with sex and drugs, there’s always a bit of rock ‘n roll in Harry Hole books. I had never heard of raga?

This book breaks with the Norwegian author putting his detective protagonist from the Oslo Crime Squad in an exotic, foreign land. The early books in the series, had lead me to believe Nesbø envisioned the series as Norwegian travel-noir. Setting the story in Oslo, Norway felt quiet as exotic as Timbuktu after following Hole to Australia and Thailand. However, it did remind me how much I dislike Scandinavian street naming conventions. With a little work, Oslo can be as important to scandi-noir as Copenhagen and Stockholm?

I noted that there were several more errors in this book than in previous books in the series. They were both procedural, technical, and translation. Having ‘ear-read’ the book, I can’t vouch for the prose, but I did have a hard copy to check back with.

More than once in the series, I’ve noted that Nesbø is unfamiliar with firearms. In a story that has arms smuggling as a plot line and were it appears arm smuggling is going to be a series plot line, this is problematic.
’As you wish Hole. I brought a Smith & Wesson with me. It’s loaded and there’s an extra clip there. Catch!”
Harry looked up just in time to catch the black holster Weber had thrown to him. He took out the revolver

Revolver-type pistols do not have ‘clips’ (properly magazines). The error is akin to confusing a passenger sedan with a pickup truck.

Another favorite error in translation (?) was
Møller watched a ladybird crawling up his thigh.
Which at first seemed to me would be quite alarming! That is, until I learned it wasn’t a real bird. Coccinellidae, commonly known as ladybugs, ladybirds, or luckybirds, are a family of beetles.

The first half of the book felt very ‘choppy’ to me, between the flashing back and forward in time for the perp’s POV and with Hole’s POV. The circumstances of Hole’s promotion to Inspector in the National Security Service, didn’t ‘feel right’ amongst the Perp’s past and present narrative. However, as the book got long, this evened-out. Although, this was Nesbø’s first outing with two (2) POVs and flashbacks in the same book. The previous books were Hole’s single POV. I thought it was a bit rough.

This story also had a ‘kinder, gentler’ Hole character. In particular, he was getting on so well with the ladies. However, true to series form, women Hole has affection for end-up dead.
Spoiler I would have liked the Ellen character to have lasted for at least two books set in Oslo.
In addition, there was a very complicated interplay between a large number of Norwegian characters. The author also took the liberty for setting-up for future books with their introduction. In the end, I came to appreciate the bait and switch Nesbø performed with the perp. However, I thought their
Spoiler dissociative identity disorder (DID)
was just too clichéd.

This story was solid, better than the earlier books in the series, but still not gold. Hole’s devolution was predictable. (It happens in every book) as well as several other cherished plot lines. The perp was well hidden, but for the first time, I felt the author cheated. I’m also glad the Norwegian travel Pr0n phase of the series is over. Oslo is an exotic locale to me. I can also see as the series gets long, the author has been honing his craft. He’s also taking bigger risks and working on more sophisticated presentations. I’ll be listening to the next book in the series, [b:Nemesis|6979826|Nemesis (Harry Hole, #4)|Jo Nesbø|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348360176l/6979826._SY75_.jpg|3023538] shortly.

Readers interested in Oslo detective novels might want to try [b:Norwegian by Night|15775210|Norwegian by Night (Sigrid Ødegård #1)|Derek B. Miller|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1343866961l/15775210._SY75_.jpg|21486468] by Derek Miller?

courtneyrath's review against another edition

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3.0

I'd give this 3.5 stars if I could.

Three books in, I can see that things are looking up for this series, but I'm still not totally sold on Harry, the main character. He's too...predictably fragile. In all three of the books so far, a woman he cares about is killed and he goes on a bender and is obnoxious. This book has the shortest version of that, thus the extra half star, and Nesbo is doing more interesting things here with research and history and narrative structure. Which don't all work that well, but I'll give him credit for the experimentation.

I'm going to try one more...

joshsharp's review against another edition

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3.0

Not the sort of thing I've been reading lately, but a pleasant diversion. It didn't feel particularly "Nordic" to me, but the writing was competent and the characters mostly had enough dimensions.

At the start, I wondered if it would be too easy to guess, but as the plot twisted I was kept surprised. Aside from some twists I didn't see coming at all, a lot of the time I had vague theories about who was who and what would happen, and when things were revealed, I was usually in the right ballpark but wrong on details. I think this is probably the best outcome because it's more fun than being either completely wrong or completely right, the former being frustrating and the latter boring. So I guess that means the author is good at his job!

I also thought Harry, the protagonist, was a pretty damn average detective, which seemed realistic.

Fun enough and easy to read, does what it sets out to do. Might read others in future.

kohlsamanda's review against another edition

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2.0

Kind of a weird, confusing story with pacing problems throughout.

Detective Harry Hole (terrible name) gets into trouble when he mistakenly shoots a secret service agent (who was in the wrong, but whatever). He gets moved up into the position of Inspector, for political reasons, where he becomes entangled in a case involving a high-powered weapon bought by a mysterious neo-Nazi that fought on the front lines many years ago.

My main issue with this book is, I'm assuming, what got lost in translation. Everything felt very cold and the characters seemed to not care very much about each other or experience great depth of emotion. There were a few violent moments involving main characters that felt overly harsh in the way that the other characters responded (or didn't), and just one too many things going on in the main plots that made it difficult to keep focus.

Something that made this book difficult to follow was the extraordinarily large web of characters/suspects that interacted with each other in different ways. Many of them had different names depending on which time period we were looking at (multiple personality disorders played a factor), and were entangled with each others' spouses as well. It all became a little confusing, but due to the dull feeling of the main characters and the story in general I found myself kind of ignoring the fact that I was confused and simply reading on.

I think the book really reminds me of a very old, slow detective movie combined with the relationship web of a soap opera. I continuously told myself after only a few pages, "That's a good stopping point", and would have to force myself to pick it back up again.

I hate giving books that have been translated one star, so I gave it two just because Jo Nesbø is so popular and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that this translation merely didn't do the original justice.

janelofton's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved the suspense and complex plot twists. The book also provides information about Norway during World War II, and Norwegians who participated in the Resistance and those who fought with the Nazis and were later tried as traitors. It was a perfect read to give some context to my trip to Norway.

mfshill's review against another edition

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3.0

Well this is my 3rd JoNesbo book and considerably better than the 1st. Good engaging story that will keep you turning the pages. Not the best of endings, a tad anticlimactic but it doesn't ruin the book. 6/10
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