(In particular, I wasn’t convinced by the risktaking, on a supporting character’s part, that set up the story’s climactic third act.) I might have expected also that the book would betray a superficial knowledge of Australian culture and character, but in fact it doesn’t do too badly on this score: outside of a reference to ‘the single-track railway to Darling Harbour’ (i.e., the monorail), it acquits itself fairly well, though does get too infodumpish in places. The Bat suffers from a few first-novel problems: the pacing is patchy, there’s perhaps rather too much monologue-as-exposition, the characters don’t always ring true. Naturally-this being crime fiction-he ends up much deeper in than that. Harry has no official involvement in the investigation into Holter’s death but, assigned an obliging ‘chaperone’ from the local Homicide division, he decides to assist in an advisory capacity. (It was apparently written during an extended holiday which Nesbø took in Australia, during which time he was supposed instead to be working on a book describing his time in a rock band.) The novel’s pretext is that a Norwegian woman holidaying in Sydney, Inger Holter, has been found raped and murdered Hole, a troubled Oslo police officer, has been sent out to Australia to escort her remains back to Norway. It has a setting that’s somewhat unusual for a Norwegian crime novel: Sydney. The Bat (Flaggermusmannen, 1997, translated by Don Bartlett a title that translates literally to ‘Batman’, thus offering considerable scope for confusion) is Nesbø’s debut novel and the first in the Harry Hole series. I’ve previously reviewed his Blood on Snow / Midnight Sun short-novel double here. He is most widely known for his longrunning ‘Harry Hole’ series of novels, and has won several awards including the Riverton Award, the Glass Key Award, the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize and the Peer Gynt Prize he has also been shortlisted for an Edgar Award. Jo Nesbø is a Norwegian crime novelist whose CV includes previous stints as a footballer, musician and reporter.
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