Police-A brief book review

Police

Author: Jo Nesbø

Publisher: Toronto: Vintage Canada Edition, 2014

518 pages, paperback

CDN $19.95

A short review by Rev. Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

Jo Nesbø, is a gifted, Norwegian crime novel writer. This is one in a series of crime sleuth investigator, Harry Hole novels. Hole is very much the unorthodox, unpredictable, solver of crimes. He reminds one a bit of the old Pink Panther movies in this respect, and like the Pink Panther hero, Hole is often despised and envied by his colleagues and superiors since they cannot understand or seem to copy his methods, which prove to be more successful than theirs.

   In this page-turner tour-de-force, Nesbø keeps his readers captivated by the multi-layered, extremely complex, and brilliantly crafted plot—actually series of plots. Just when the reader thinks Hole and his colleagues are about to catch the perpetrator and solve the crimes, another surprising plot is born and off we go on another adventure. 

   Police, among other things, tells the story of Harry Hole being shot and nearly dead, then recovering, and then taking up a job of teaching new police recruits. Along the way, there are many twists and turns in Hole’s life and work and relationships. Eventually he becomes involved in trying to solve the murder of several police officers because the others assigned to the case keep running into dead ends. 

   In the midst of it all Nesbø describes the corrupt politics and sociopathic behaviours within the police force. 

   I’m not going to give away the grand finale; but I will say that Hole eventually ends up being kind of a Christ figure in that he saves a colleague who regards Hole as his enemy; and Hole also ends up getting married in a church; even though he is next-to-impossible to live with.