Mystery

Every once in awhile, a mystery author comes along that grabs my attention. Subsequently, I wait anxiously for the next book to be published. In this case, the book also has to be translated from Norwegian to English. Although I can read enough Norwegian to get around, order food and say a few things, my skills fall far short of what is needed to read a book with any joy.

Jo Nesbo, the multifaceted Norwegian author of a series of popular fiction novels is just such an author. Nesbo is a part of the "Steig Larrson" phenomenon that has swept the U.S. Who knew that there were so many crime authors in tiny Scandinavian countries? The Larrson books have opened the door to many great new fiction authors. Maybe it is all the long winters and dark days that breed so many capable writers? Whatever the reason, Scandinavian mysteries have gone global. There is something of a paradox in the fact that some of the safest countries in the world have spawned a generation of great writers on the darker motivations of humanity.

Nesbo's first novel in the series in English, Redbreast introduces us to his main character and wrestles with the open wound that every country which played host to Nazi control sustained: the gray and sometimes shifting boundary between who was a patriot or a traitor. This is a good place to start with the series. There are two previous Harry Hole stories that precede Redbreast. Unfortunately, they have yet to be translated.

When I visited Norway and Sweden, I was amazed at how "anglicized" and "Americanized" everything was. A combination of proximity to Great Britain, links to America, and the huge Norwegian and Swedish diasporas, have shaped these countries in ways that often make them indistinguishable from places in the anglophone world. Nobody skips a beat if you walk into McDonald’s and say “I'll have a Big Mac” without any pretensions of trying to speak the local language or dialect. Nesbo's books are heavily influenced by the American " hardboiled or noir" tradition of crime fiction. They recall Raymond Chandler books from the period when the art deco effervescence of this genre was in full bloom: the 1930's.

Nesbo's character, Harry Hole, is not an overly likeable character, but I like him. It is the likeability and especially the identification with characters (particularly in light popular fiction) that draws me to books in a series with the same protagonist. Harry Hole is part Phillip Marlowe , yet very normal and believable. He is parts of many someones that we know in our personal lives: a man whose own foibles continue to ruin what could be a workable life.

The classic Sherlock Holmes mysteries have this same draw for me as the Hole series. There is something that draws me to the personalities of both Holmes and Watson. They are a sort of mystery yin and yang. Alone, Holmes would be just a curiosity with Asberger's, struggling to negotiate the world. Watson, would be just a colorless, banal character unworthy of fiction. It is together that their personalities merge into something special. The updated adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes "myth", Sherlock done by the BBC, brings these two heroic characters into the 21st Century. Many stories published before the watershed date of 1923, have become "myths" of sorts, due to their repeated republication in new and different forms. People who have never read a book by Dickens or Conan Doyle, are still familiar with the characters and the broad outlines of some of their stories. To say "no shit Sherlock" or to label something Dickensian evokes thoughts in the minds of most people. Just like the mythical stories of ancient Greece, characters from pre-1923 literature live again in ever new forms of creation. I wonder if we will ever have myths again?

Whether it is the remaking of classic archetypal detectives or the reimagining of a classic American genre in a new country, the reinvention of investigators in the form of Sherlock Holmes or Harry Hole will continue to be great fun.