Book Review | A Norwegian master on the heat of the moment

At the heart of Jo Nesbo’s intriguing, somewhat self-reflexive story, ‘Odd’, is the novelist Odd Rimmen. In an aside, Nesbo draws our attention to the fact that Rimmen’s work reaches “thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands (not millions) of readers”. As soon as I read this sentence, my mind went back to the cover of this book, Nesbo’s first collection of stories. On the cover, all in capitals, in bold black, is the line: ‘Over 50 million books sold’. It is a smart joke, but it is hard to tell who it is on.

Given the popularity of Scandinavian noir as a genre, and given the huge readership that the Swedish novelist, Stieg Larsson, has acquired in India, it is a pity that Nesbo – a Norwegian writer who has sold more than 50 million books across the world – is not quite as well known in India. The Financial Times has called him the “king of Scandi crime”. For my money, sentence for sentence, he is a finer writer than Larsson. The pace of his novels is relentless, the set pieces evocative, the dialogue razor sharp and often very funny, the suspense consumes readers and forces them to keep turning the pages. Nesbo’s most enduring creation is the detective, Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-leh), a troubled, complex, idealistic man who loves nothing more than to fight the good fight.

There is no Harry Hole in this collection of stories. But there is enough of the trademark pacing, suspense and immaculate, intricate plotting. Nesbo likes to work on large canvases (his novels tend to be long). He loves to pile sub-plot upon sub-plot, red herring on red herring, and ratchet up the tension till the reader is left gasping for breath. Here, the format of the short story makes him do something different: rely on the charge of a single moment, the explosiveness of a sudden twist that upends what the reader had been led to believe.

A classic example of this is the opening story, ‘London’, in which a sinister euthanasia plot unfolds on a plane ride from New York to London. In ‘The Line’, another example of using the emotional charge of a moment, an immigrant takes a deadly revenge for being harassed by an abusive, loutish young man in a store. ‘Trash’ is a chilling tale of self-discovery of what an angry man, in the throes of an alcohol-induced blackout, is capable of.

Two of the pieces here are of novella-length: the riveting title story about a detective from Athens who goes to a Greek island to find out if a twin killed his other twin; and ‘Rat Island’, which uses the framing of the pandemic, to hold up a mirror to the selfishness and ruthlessness of the super-rich.

Nesbo has a great eye and ear. And the prose is sharp and rich in details. Here is a sample: “…the London air of the narrow alleyway, a combination of exhaust fumes, burnt metal and cheese from the restaurant’s extractor fan.”

If you have never read Nesbo, this is a perfect, condensed entry point. I dare you to read The Jealousy Man and not go on to the Harry Hole novels. If you are a longstanding fan, you cannot afford to miss this.

The Jealousy Man

By Jo Nesbo

Translated by Robert Ferguson

Penguin Vintage

pp. 511, Rs 499