The Bat is the first in the Harry Hole (pronounced Holy) series by Norwegian author Joe Nesbo. Honestly, I’m not sure who recommended these books to me or how they ended up on my library wish list but it did, so when it became available, I checked it out.
Harry is an extremely flawed police detective from Norway and in this story, he’s sent to Sydney Australia to observe (nee help) in the investigation of a murdered Norwegian national. He’s, of course, quickly thrown into the center of the investigation, unraveling a mystery only he can solve, mainly because of his outsider status. We, the reader, get a good smattering of information about Australia, particularly the unfair treatment of its indiginous population, the aborginees and the culture of ceratin areas of Sydney in 1990s (as the book was originally published in 1997).
A side note, the entire concept of aborginees fascinates me. Where did they originally come from? How did they get there? Has anyone done studies on them to see if 40,000 years of isolation caused them to evolve differently than European, Asian or Africans? That kind of stuff.
Anyway, my feelings towards the story flow somewhere between “It was OK” and “I liked it” because I’m not a huge fan of Harry. Furthermore, I hate when the author reveals something to the detective but not to us the reader. He does that by telling us something occurred to Harry but not telling us what exactly it was or by having revelations occur “off camera.” I guess though on the positive side, because of this technique, I was left guessing to near the end.
The other thing I didn’t like was the character of Brigitte. Not that I didn’t like her per se, but you just know once it’s confirmed a serial killer is at work, and once we know Harry is stupid enough to use her as bait and that of course the Australian police are stupid enough not to keep complete tabs on her, she’s going to end up dead. It’s like the Patricia Cornwall-Kay Scarpetta issue rearing its ugly head right in the first book!
One last thing I realized after finishing this book, most of the detective series I do enjoy (well since Delaney in Lawrence Sanders’ Deadly Sin series and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poroit) feature women. So maybe poor Harry is suffering from a bit of reverse discrimination because of his sex. Sorry, can’t help that.
Either way, I can’t decide if I’m going to continue with this series or give it a pass. Though, the fact that the next book, Cockroaches, is a readily available library book does play in its favor.