Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
She had scrutinised his passport with conspicuous interest. Whether it was the photograph or his name that had initially put her in such a cheery mood was hard to say.
In summary, I found The Bat to be a welcome summer read -- engaging and difficult to put down. Definitely recommended for current and future fans of Harry Hole alike. I'm looking forward to reading more books in the series. De todas maneras, lo recomiendo sobre todo para continuar la serie y entender mejor los demonios de Harry Hole. As the story becomes more complex, Hole struggles to find the killer and falls deeper into alcoholism. Setting the story in Australia seemed a peculiar choice for a Nordic writer. I don't know if Australian readers will approve, but having worked in and around Sydney years ago, I was slightly amused. It is discovered that a serial killer may be travelling around the country, abducting, raping and strangling young blond women. The police force and Harry begin to see a pattern of murder here. As Harry meets more people associated with the dead Norwegian woman through his partner, they both turn their attention to the drug trade and local sex offenders. Harry becomes the object of jokes as he offers a new name as a probable suspect at most meetings. Harry Hole is a Norwegian detective out of his element in Australia, investigating the death of a Norwegian national. Although he isn’t really supposed to be involved, he discovers a string of linked murders, and ends up the de facto leader of an investigation into a serial killer whose identity is almost impossible to pin down. Hole has to try to fight his own demons off long enough to catch the murderer, forever changing his own life in the process.
Features & Profiles
Actually, The Bat seems more like one of those books that you would find much later in a series, at a time when the author has begun to run out of ideas and so sends his character off to an exotic land to mix things up a bit--and, not incidentally, to give the author a great vacation that he can deduct as a business expense.
While the case isn't the strongest we really get a good idea of Harry's flawed character, straight from the opening chapter we are presented with him frantically trying to find his Visa at passport control. Andrew ran the conversation for the rest of the ride. He drove Harry to King’s Cross, holding forth the whole way: this area was Sydney’s red-light district and the centre for the drugs trade and to a large extent all the other shady dealings in town. Every second scandal seemed to have a connection with some hotel or strip joint inside this square kilometre. For me the best thing about Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole novels is their dark and moody Norwegian setting, so perhaps I didn't like The Bat because it's set in Sydney. As much as this is Nordic noir, it read very differently from what I expected. The prose was very direct and uncomplicated, as expected from the genre. However, the number of action sequences, gunplay, and the sheer number of fights that Harry manages to get into felt to me more like an American TV thriller than the gritty, realist procedural pieces that I love most about Scandinavian crime fiction.
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. Jo Nesbo – I am glad some publisher somewhere saw the potential in your writing – I did enjoy your other books in this series but think that the publisher did me a favour by not translating this first novel of the series any sooner – if I hadn't read this book at all I would be perfectly happy and not felt as if I had been cheated of a potentially great read. This debut effort shows Nesbø as an already confident genre craftsman, striking sparks from the familiar genre material of Harry’s fish-out-of-water experience in a foreign land and odd-couple pairing with a mismatched partner." Un comienzo bastante digno para una serie que, por lo que he leído, mejora notablemente en sus próximas entregas. Por lo mismo, lo sentí como un libro más bien introductorio, que ocupa varias páginas en presentarnos a su personaje principal, Harry Hole, un policía noruego, que lucha permanentemente para mantener controlado su problema de alcoholismo (no siempre con mucho éxito, la verdad).
In some ways, the appeal of The Bat is easy to fathom. The principal character, Inspector Harry Hole, like so many modern detectives, has a few flaws. The first flaw has become almost a trope with crime fiction detective characters. Harry is a recovering alcoholic who often turns to alcohol when the going gets tough. But in Hole’s case, trope or not, it works. Drunk or sober, he’s almost always disorganized and isn’t a particularly reliable boyfriend. Yet Hole also displays many positive qualities, such as never wanting to let his friends or colleagues down. Like many it was the adaptation of 'The Snowman' that alerted me to these stories, but that's the 7th book in the series. A sudden, uncontrollable fury rose in him, and he cast around for something to smash. He snatched the whiskey bottle from the table and was about to launch it at the wall, but changed his mind at the last moment. Lifelong training in self-control, he thought, opening the bottle and putting it to his mouth.”
Get to know Harry Hole
His heart sank, as it invariably did when there was a hint of a catastrophe in the offing. Perhaps ‘sir’ was used only when situations became critical? No quiero ser injusto con la saga porqué este es el primer libro, pero no me apetece nada seguir con ella, visto lo visto.
Respecto de la historia, hasta la mitad del libro se siente bastante simple; una investigación que avanza sin muchos sobresaltos por diferentes localidades de Australia, hasta donde llega Harry para colaborar con la policía australiana en la resolución de un caso de violación y asesinato de una ciudadana noruega residente en Sidney, que en el pasado había logrado cierta fama animando programas infantiles. En esta primera parte se disfruta mucho el relato de varias leyendas del pueblo aborigen australiano, principalmente narradas por Andrew, el compañero asignado a Harry por la policía local y que, al menos para mí, se roba el protagonismo de la novela. And that was when her lips had pursed, turned ugly and articulated, with a pointed tone:“Why isn’t there a visa in your passport, sir?” No, Harry thought. It’s the other way round. Work long enough and you see the tiny nuances each murder has, the details that distinguish one from another and make each one unique. We are presented with a human being at odds with himself but honest about his short-comings and still plagued by his errors, barely functioning as a cop; indeed should have been driven out of the force for misconduct.Kensington’s a good man. There are not many Indigenous officers who have come up through the ranks like him.” The East Side of Sydney’s not exactly like the East End of London,” Andrew explained as they passed one fashionable house after another. “This district’s called Double Bay. We call it Double Pay.” Not really wanted by the local police force in Sydney but one detective befriends him and sees him as the key to snapping open the case. Found by fishermen on the ocean side of Watson’s Bay—to be more precise, Gap Park. Semi-naked. Bruising suggested she had been raped first and then strangled, but no semen was found. Later transported at the dead of night to the park where the body was dumped off the cliff.”
Great Deal 
New Comment