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Jo Nesbø's hitmen

2020-12-02T15:18:12.455Z


Harry Hole's father separates at times from his tortured character to give life to other original and powerful plots


Ever since Arthur Conan Doyle decided to do without Sherlock Holmes (yes, we already know that later he had no choice but to rescue him from death under pressure from fans), the history of the authors of the genre with the heroes that have made them famous and Rich, sometimes is tricky.

It does not seem that this is the case of Jo Nesbø (Oslo, 60 years old), the father of Harry Hole, one of the great characters of contemporary crime novel, who continues to walk his sufferings through troubled Norway and who, despite his addictions , wounds, suicide missions and other atrocities has come alive in the twelfth installment of the series (

Chuchillo

, Roja y Negra).

But, as in any good relationship that aspires to work, Nesbø needs his space and has been doing dabbling in his work for some time.

He did it ten years after starting Harry Hole with the novels starring the flamboyant professor Doctor Proctor, not translated into Spanish.

But what interests us here is the author's black side, his exploration of the world of crime from other angles, which has yielded excellent results that we can find today in bookstores.

MORE INFORMATION

  • Jo Nesbo does justice to 'Macbeth'

  • Jo Nesbø: "In Norway the pandemic is the new mass entertainment"

The Oslo hitmen series is the best example.

It is Nesbø's look at the criminal world of the 1970s, beginning with

Blood in the Snow

(Reservoir Books, May 2020).

Laura Fernández says in the introduction to the interview she did for EL PAÍS, a perfect summary of what the novel intends: “Olav, the protagonist of

Blood in the Snow

, is a good guy, somewhat clumsy, to whom everything is given bad except kill.

There, and in his obsession with the deaf-mute and lame supermarket cashier there is something of the delirium of Ed McBain, but also of the darkness of A murderer inside me and 1,280 souls of Jim Thompson, because his voice is what guides the story, and he's an unreliable storyteller — like the one in The

Usual Suspects

and

Fight Club

— who, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is tasked with taking care of someone's wife (his boss).

A

femme fatale

, Corina, who is exactly what she seems: a soulless being ”.

All this spiced up with the use of a crazed first person (Nesbø's renowned tribute to Knut Hamsun) and humor.

The second installment of this peculiar series is

Sun of Blood

(Reservoir Books, translation by Lotte Katrine Tollefsen) and in it the tone is changed towards something more lyrical.

It is the story of a failed hit man who reaches the inhospitable north of Norway, the last place where the henchmen of The Fisherman, the all-powerful trafficker he has deceived, can look for him.

It's 1977 and Kasund is a place where nothing happens, where there are no robberies because there is nothing to steal, where people drink and go to the church of one of the radical Christian congregations in the area, a a place where the sun doesn't set, where the weather is extreme and the people, well, you know what happens to people anywhere.

Is it a

thriller

as the Anglo-Saxon critics said?

I do not think so.

Is it a rural story, something exotic?

Yes, but not alone, far from it.

It is the story of a loser who seeks redemption.

It is also a love story and has the right action and violence.

Before these two books, good proofs of Nesbø's versatility in the genre, the author of Nemesis had written

The Heir

(Reservoir Books), a prison drama with corrupt policemen and mafias that I have not read and therefore I'm not going to talk and

Macbeth

(Lumen, translation again by Lotte Katrine Tollefsen), her participation, black and extremely violent, in the Hogarth Shakespeare project.

An excessive novel in every way in which, in 600 pages, Nesbø develops parallel plots and gives life to secondary characters in Shakespeare's drama in a city, it seems Glasgow, uchronic and dystopian.

Nesbo says that when he was offered to be part of the project he refused because he does not write anything that is not an original idea.

Then he thought about it and made his participation conditional on being allowed to choose Macbeth.

We cannot know what Shakespeare thinks, but we can say what he enjoys with this prince of darkness.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-12-02

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