The World's Best Crime Novelist?

Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy was a huge international success, and made everyone hungry for more Scandinavian crime fiction.  Now, since he is no longer with us, the search is on for the next Larsson.  One fellow whose name is being touted as such is Norweigian author Jo Nesbø.

While his books share the same darkness of of mood and setting, I don't think this is quite right.  In fact, I  would call Nesbø the Norweigian Michael Connelly.   Nesbø's main character Harry Hole has much in common with Connelly's detective Harry Bosch.  Both are lone wolf cops with damaged pasts and unhealthy tastes for alcohol.  Both writers' styles are rooted in the hard-boiled conventions of the past, but feature lots of psychological exploration of the main character.  

However, as much as I love Mr. Connelly, I think Nesbø is the better writer, and may be one the best crime fiction authors writing today.  I have read the four Harry Hole novels available in the US:  The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil's Star and The Snowman and they are all superior examples of modern crime fiction.  His stories are complex, fast paced, cinematic, full of emotional depth, and thoroughly compelling. He also manages to throw in a nice dollop of humor and many pop-culture references into the mix.    Nesbø  also likes to experiment stylistically, often playing with time-frame and form. But the main thing that makes his books so readable is the character of Harry Hole. A character as flawed, haunted, and morose as Harry has no right to be likable,  but Nesbø does such a great job putting us inside Harry's head that we can't help but embrace him.  Here, Nesbø talks about Harry:

The Snowman is the latest Harry Hole novel to be released in the US, and Knopf is trying to play up the whole "next Stieg Larsson" angle.  I think this is a mistake.   Nesbø is a far better writer than Larsson, and The Snowman itself has much more in common with The Silence of the Lambs than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.   The book spent a couple weeks on some hardcover bestseller lists, but is now down in the mid-twenties on the  New York Times hardcover fiction list.  This book deserves a huge audience, and it is by far his best book yet.  The story has heavy horror overtones, and is nearly impossible to put down.  Granted, it's a bit easy to spot the identity of the killer early on, especially if you've read a lot of crime fiction, but this is acceptable since Nesbø manages to keep the story moving at such a break-neck pace.  Here, Nesbø talks about the book's plot:

There's also a wonderfully cinematic trailer for the book:

If that doesn't make you want to read the book, nothing will.  It also makes you want to see the movie, of course, which doesn't exist yet.  However, it looks like there may be one in the future.  Already, a stand-alone thriller of Nesbø's called Headhunter has been made into a film and debuts in Norway in August.



All this bodes well for Nesbø's continued success.  He's huge in Norway, but whether or not he catches on in the US remains to be seen.  He certainly deserves to to be as successful as Larsson, if not more so.