NESBO TRYS TO HELP HARRY BURY THE PAST IN PHANTOM

It’s that time of year again when we try to lay the ghosts of the past year and prepare ourselves for the fresh bright new days of 2013. The dark, cold winter evenings are at their height and if it’s not snowing (it’s been two years since we had a white Christmas in Ireland), then its either raining or blowing a gale. The perfect reason to stay in by the radiator with a good book.  Another person trying to rid himself of the ghosts of his past and wishing he was back in a warm climate is ex police inspector Harry Hole (pronounced Hool). Norwegian Crime writer Jo Nesbo’s creation is now in his ninth book, Phantom. But at time of reviewing this, the tenth Harry Hole book has been translated into english.

 

Phantom finds harry back in his native Oslo far from his current life as a debt collector for a Hong Kong Businessman. He’s a changed man following his run in with the serial killer “The Snowman”, both mentally and physically. The events of the previous two books have ripped his life apart. He returns to a different Oslo that he worked the streets as a leading police detective; the city is now in the grip of a new drug.

 

Harry had no intention of returning, but when Oleg the son of his ex girlfriend Rakel is found guilty of murdering a Junkie. He feels he has no option but to try to re-open a seemingly straightforward case of murder. It’s easier said then done as the Oslo police, once his colleagues now don’t want a bumbling, on the wagon, ex cop walking all over their case. But harry is never one to take no for an answer and goes about attempting to solve the case in his usual unorthodox way, while trying to re kindle the relationship between himself and Rakel. On top of all this, his every movement his being watched and somebody wants him dead.

 

You have to hand it to Jo Nesbo his writing is vivid and the situations he gets harry into are tension filled but also slightly madcap. In one instance in the book he goes about plundering the grave of the victim in the dead of night with a straight laced lawyer for assistance. Which then turns into a pursuit across the city dressed in the same muddy, sweat and blood stained suit he’s been wearing for days, with a large cut on his neck which is stitched Rambo style with sewing thread and reinforced with gaffer tape, making him appear to the minds eye like a sort of cross between Frankenstein and John McClane. He’s also carrying the large scar from a previous encounter years ago on his cheek, talk about having that “lived-in” look. Not forgetting Harry is also supposed to be quite and blonde, that is until Tom Cruise gets his hands on the role.

 

Jo again delivers another great read, with harry back on familiar ground and leading us up and down the mysterious streets of Oslo. I’ve never been but after reading a number of these books I’d like to walk in Harry’s footsteps through the almost unpronounceable street names and areas of the city. If there’s one down side to the book it’s the whole chapters given over too one of the minor characters in the book talking to his dead father which stop-starts the whole story.

 

So if your looking to escape the festive hula-baloo, then take up a glass of one warming spirit and follow harry and his into the new year.  

JORDAN DELIVERS A DOUBLE DOSE OF DUBLIN LIFE WITH MISTAKEN

They say everyone has a double in the world. Even if it’s from behind, we’ve often heard stories of people running up to total strangers, tapping them on the shoulder and greeting them like long lost friends. Only for the stranger to turn around and leave the greeter stumped and embarrassed when they realise they’re facing a total stranger. I’ve done it myself, with some very embarrassing consequences.  This is the premise for Irish Film director Neil Jordan’s fifth book “Mistaken”.

 Kevin Thunder has a look-a-like, Gerald Spain; they live on different sides of Dublin city. Kevin lives on the Northside and Gerald on the Southside.  But Kevin is forever being mistaken for Gerald, he’s thrown out of amusement arcades, accused of shoplifting and meets girls Gerald has dated and who mistake him for the Southside charmer, eventually he deliberately starts interloping into Gerald’s life. Kevin’s life is that of an only child to a near permanently absent bookmaker father and a loving mother who goes swimming daily and takes in lodgers in a house next door to where Bram Stoker lived.

 Gerald grows up in an affluent family on the Southside where he goes to one of the best schools in Ireland and goes on to be a famous writer. We then through the eyes of Kevin and his recanting to Emily, Gerald’s daughter retrace their strange lives and how their paths criss-crossed over the years for good and bad.

 The book was recently presented to my local book group and it is a great read, this being echoed by the majority of the group. I found it a nice easy read with a great tour round almost every part of Dublin and a few foreign places. As you would expect from an accomplished film director and scriptwriter it is well written. I found it strangely erotic in his descriptions of the central characters shared romantic involvement, more so then Fifty Shades. Also it’s a very exciting concept, innocently walking into someone else life pretending to be them and successfully carrying it off without even trying, it’s like a voyeurs wet dream.

 Of the two main characters, Gerald is rather washed over, and so are his family, but there is a good explanation for this. The story jumps back and forth through time and geographically when told through one main character, if we’d had it told through both characters the reader would have probably got confused very quickly and given up on the book, this is something Jordan has learned from his film work and from the basic premise of all story telling, “KISS” – keep it simple stupid.

 You do start to wonder how these two can look so a like and there were thoughts of something a kin to the "Time Travellers wife" by Audrey Niffenegger or the result of weird medical experiments, when all in all it’s actually a rather mundane reason for their shared resemblances. The minor downsides to this book are some very woefully editing, which was picked by other members of the book group, including the misspelling of the name of a very well known Italian restaurant in Dublin and the re-routing of a certain bus route in south Dublin.

 There are a couple of characters who should maybe have been cut from the story in the drafting process, namely Daragh a friend of Kevin’s who suffers a breakdown after getting caught up in their sordid double life and the recurring ghost of Bram Stoker which does nothing drive story on.

 Overall this is a great read from a master story-teller of the celluloid and print genres, so open this book and let your voyeuristic side out and lose yourself in the back waters and thoroughfares of  Dublin's fair city.