The first and last of Harry Hole

[sholio]

When rachelmanija and scioscribe went to Bouchercon without me this fall (I had health things going on that made a cancellation necessary) they very kindly sent me a large box of books, including free swag and books they picked up for me. Some of the free swag was a pair of books by Scandinoir author Jo Nesbø, one of the guests of honor at the con and author of the Harry Hole series: The Snowman and The Leopard were the specific ones. These were sent to me mostly because Rachel tried one of them and hated it, and included the following confidence-inspiring note from my bookish benefactors:

What kind of bullshit name is Harry Hole? Maybe it sounds better in Norwegian.

Tonight I decided to try them. What follows is adapted from my emails as I gradually gave up on Nesbø.


I started with The Snowman. Pretty soon I emailed Rachel and Scioscribe:

I read the first three pages of Snowman and I already hate it.

So naturally they wanted details.

The opening scene is just so offputting! Woman leaves her kid in the car and goes up to her - boyfriend? ex's? house for a booty call. But it's not the scenario specifically, it's just that there's so much ugh and squick in the way it's described. "She had already opened for him" when she's standing at the front door with all her clothes on. How do you think female genitalia works exactly, Nesbo? And unless I missed a part where she comes inside and closes the door (always possible, I was reading fast), she's feeling up the guy's dick through his pants while in full view of the kid in the car.

Nevertheless, I persevered, slogging through a couple more chapters in which the highlight was this typo:



It's a brand new language, Norwenglish!

(Rachel, when I sent this: "What is it with this book and breasts?")

Funny she should mention that. By now I had given up on The Snowman and moved on to The Leopard, which opens with:

a) a gruesome murder
followed by
b) a scene in which a female character is introduced by examining herself in detail in the mirror and thinking about how hot she is, as one does, particularly her small yet perfectly formed breasts, as you do
followed by
c) the reveal that Harry Hole is no longer an alcoholic detective in Norway; he quit and is now a drug addict living in a flophouse in Hong Kong and borrowing money from the triads to gamble with.

I have never cared less about a character hitting rock bottom.


Nesbø also really seems to like bizarre, overly complicated murders. But not in an interesting way! Just in a dumb and convoluted way.

In Snowman, the murderer builds a snowman on the lawn of the person he's going to kill before he kills them, and then buries some of their personal effects in the snowman afterwards. I'm sure there's some rationale, I didn't get far enough into the book to find out what it was, but as a serial killer's calling card, it's just so pointlessly risky and hard to take seriously; it's like having him pull on squeaky clown shoes. I cannot think of a single reason why, as a writer, one would decide to make this choice other than providing an excuse so that the book can have a sinister snowman on the cover.

The second book (of these two, it's the fifth or sixth chronologically) opens with a scene in which an imprisoned victim has had a complex spring-loaded mechanism stuffed into her mouth and is then left alone. It eventually kills her when she does the thing she was told not to do and pulls a string attached to it in an attempt to get it out, at which point it shoots her head full of needles. (I thought it was a grenade, which honestly would have made more sense.)

I looked the series up on Wikipedia to find out about the general series trajectory, and apparently the protagonist remains a depressed alcoholic for 13 books. I know it's a genre staple, but c'mon, Hole, get it together.

Furthermore, I decided to check out the Amazon preview of the next-to-latest book because the description sounded genuinely interesting (he wakes up after a drunken blackout covered in blood, which plunges him into his most dangerous case yet, or words to that effect). Sounds interesting! Solving a drunken blackout mystery!

It turns out that there is approximately 10 seconds of mystery before a friend informs him that the blood is due to the fact that he got into a drunken bar fight the night before. The next half chapter is Hole trying to get friends to loan him money so he can buy more booze.

.... I think I'm done with Harry Hole.

Comments

[sushiflop]

just a black hole of a protagonist, huh?

[sholio]

It's a very accurate name for him.

(Evidently it means "Hill" in Norwegian and is not that unusual. There are times, however, when it's worth it to let your foreign-rights publisher translate the name.)

[sushiflop]

It sounds like the localization has some holes for sure.

In all seriousness, what a deeply unpleasant... vibe towards women sdkgsg

[scioscribe]

Seriously! Just call him Harry Hill!

[sovay]

"Støp."

I laughed out loud and had to explain to spatch.

c) the reveal that Harry Hole is no longer an alcoholic detective in Norway; he quit and is now a drug addict living in a flophouse in Hong Kong and borrowing money from the triads to gamble with.

I am deeply disappointed in any neo-noir that can make this development boring.

It turns out that there is approximately 10 seconds of mystery before a friend informs him that the blood is due to the fact that he got into a drunken bar fight the night before. The next half chapter is Hole trying to get friends to loan him money so he can buy more booze.

Oh, my God.

[sholio]

I will be randomly cracking up over "Støp" for days.

I am deeply disappointed in any neo-noir that can make this development boring.

Right??? I think the big issue here is that Nesbø failed to make me interested in Harry Hole even slightly. Although, to be fair, these are two books from the middle of the series, so maybe starting at the beginning would have helped. But I wasn't interested in the crimes either!

[rheanna]

There's a British comedian called Harry Hill whose main comedic schtick can be characterised as 'happy silliness' and I feel like these books would be massively improved if he were the protagonist rather than Harry Hole.

Also, Norwenglish! Brilliant.

[sholio]

Nordic Noir with a cheerful comedian protagonist is something that I would 100% read.

[rachelmanija]

Harry Hill investigating a killer who makes snowmen is 100% something I would read.

[black_bentley]

I've read most of the Harry Hole books (all bar the last one, I think), but I started them a loooooong time ago, and when I picked up a later one more recently I was amazed at the way the truly horrible attitude towards every single one of the female characters absolutely smacked me in the face.

And then I thought about it and realised they'd all been like that. So I ejected them from the house.

Edited to add: "more recently" was still about 4 years ago!

[sholio]

Yeah, the general background "ugh" about women was really the big thing I bounced off of. I actually have been able to get past this before - I mean, I really like the James Bond books ... and it's possible I'd have gone ahead and liked them if I had read them at a different time in my life, but right now, nooooope.

[vass]

I know it's a genre staple, but c'mon, Hole, get it together.

The first rule of being Hole is: stop digging.

[sholio]

The first rule of being Hole is: stop digging.

This is amazing and you should be proud. :D

[philomytha]

That sounds completely batshit, but not in a good way. And that bit about the mastectomy, OMG. Definitely time for Harry to crawl back into his hole and stay there.

[sholio]

He can crawl back into his hole and I am definitely not looking into it again!

[rachelmanija]

sholio forgot to mention that the villain has no nipples.

[sholio]

OH RIGHT. I don't think I got far enough along to actually get to that part.

I forget if the detailed description of the female protagonist's breasts in the mirror included lovingly analyzing her own nipples, but it probably did.

[yhlee]

Lolololol omg. This is begging for a parody take.

[sholio]

Although it was completely played straight and I don't think it was supposed to be self-aware in any way, there were genuinely aspects of this that *felt* like a parody of the depressed alcoholic cop noir genre.

[edenfalling]

...ewww

[sholio]

RIGHT???

[leesa_perrie]

Yeah, that does not appeal! You have some good friends there, sharing these with you, lol! Though I admit, I'd probably have done the very same thing! :D

[sholio]

I mean, I *did* want to check out his books and see what they were like! Now I know and can never read them again.

[snickfic]

Given how often I read book reviews and add things to my to-read list, there is something refreshing about reading one now and then where I finish with full confidence that I never, ever need to read the book in question. Well done. 😂

[sholio]

Hahahahaaaaa. Well, you're welcome for making your to-read list one series shorter. 😂

[scioscribe]

It's such a relief to know you will not regret skipping something!

[chanter1944]

I echo a comment above: Ewwww. :(

Assume the officer in the icon is equally unimpressed, for good reason.

[sholio]

Your icon looks like it has entirely correct attitudes about this book.

[chanter1944]

Rand would be rather disgusted over the treatment of women, for sure! Then again, so would Goddard. *gestures at this icon*

[aella_irene]

I was once reading a romance novel where one of the heroes goes through exactly this process, only he gets as far as seeing Harry Hole, goes "Hairy Hole?" and throws the book aside. Alas, the next book he picks up contains a corpse filled with worms.

[sholio]

Haha, oh no. xD Yeah, I saw somewhere that the author named the character after Harry Bosch (fictional American PI) and that's all fine, but maybe his last name should be something other than Hole.

[rachelmanija]

That romance novel, on the other hand, sounds delightful.

[aella_irene]

Josh Lanyon, The Boy with the Painful Tattoo, which is the third in the Moriarity and Holmes series, which works for me in some ways, and does not in others. Also there was a minor scandal with the author in which it turned out that Josh Lanyon, being sold as a male writer of really real and realistic gay romances, was in fact a woman.

[lizbee]

I feel like my initial reactions of "eh, crime fiction by men is a low priority" and "Harry Hole is quite a name" hold true! Well done, me, not reading them despite my love of Nordic nonsense.

[sholio]

Rejecting it simply on the basis of the protagonist's name does not seem to be a bad life choice, all things considered.

[sheron]

It eventually kills her when she does the thing she was told not to do and pulls a string attached to it in an attempt to get it out, at which point it shoots her head full of needles.

D:!

[sholio]

The only viable reaction.

[michelel72]

I forgot "The Snowman" was made into a movie! (It didn't interest me at the time. Still doesn't, frankly.) Arve Støp is apparently one of the characters in that book/movie.

Wikipedia says "Hole" is pronounced "HOO-leh" for this character. I always wish I could learn pronunciations before having to guess or assume them; it took me years to mentally-pronounce Hermione correctly.

[michelel72]

From Wikipedia: "Bjarne Møller, head of the Oslo Police Department, often shields Hole from being fired, believing he is a brilliant detective and vital to certain investigations. This repeated protection results in Harry feeling loyal and close to Møller."

HIS BOSS IS BARNEY MILLER OMG.

[sholio]

Arve Støp is apparently one of the characters in that book/movie.

Haha, oops, I completely misread that sentence! Though in my defense, there had been no previous mention of that character and there is no other mention of them anywhere else in that scene or in any other part of the book I'd read before I gave up ...

[tamsin]

I read one of Nesbo's later books and it just kept trying to pile new exciting twists on totally surprising developments without any attention to whether the plot would still hang together after it or fit the characters or retain a shred of credibility.

So I think your decision to give up on Harry Hole is a good one. *g*