crimefictioncritic.com

I picked up a copy of The Bat from the bargain shelves of a Books A Million store while on vacation in 2019. The book caught my eye because while I knew nothing about Harry Hole, I had heard a little about Jo Nesbø. I knew he was Norwegian and wrote Scandinavian noir crime fiction books. I hadn’t read a synopsis of the book but was aware The Bat was the first book in a series.

Reading the first few pages, I was thinking along the same lines as the book’s first sentence. Something was wrong. Having visited Australia a few times, the greeting by the passport official sounded familiar. But I was sure Norwegians weren’t in the habit of saying, “How are ya, mate?” When you pick up a Scandinavian noir novel written by a Norwegian author, you automatically assume the setting will be somewhere in Scandinavia. But things started to make sense as I read further.     

The Bat begins in the most non-Nordic location imaginable, with Harry Hole arriving in Sydney, Australia. He’s there at the request of the Australian police who are investigating the murder of Norwegian TV presenter and minor TV celebrity,  23-year-old Inger Holter. The Australian authorities had recovered her body from the sea after someone had beaten and raped her. The Australian police don’t actually want Hole’s help investigating the case. They are only hopeful that having a Norwegian police officer around will allay Norwegian tourists’ fears so that the valuable Scandinavian tourism won’t dry up with all the negative press.

Harry, haunted by past personal and professional troubles, teams up with a bluff, friendly homicide cop of Aboriginal descent, Andrew Kensington. Working with Kensington, welcome or not, Hole wades right into the investigation, making both friends and enemies in the Bohemian quarter of Sydney where Inger worked. He and Kensington chase down some leads that take them into the Outback looking for a drug dealer, and we get a fascinating view of the Aboriginal experience from a most unexpected source. Along the way of working out Inger’s death is the work of a serial killer, Hole finds time to begin a new relationship with another Scandinavian ex-pat, Swedish barmaid Birgitta Enquist.

Harry’s fish-out-of-water experience in a foreign land and the odd-couple pairing with a mismatched partner makes for pleasurable reading all the way to the end.