Crime Fiction | Book Chatter

The Redbreast
By Jo Nesbø
(Harper, Mass Market Paperback, 9780062068422, August 2011, 576pp.)

The Short of It:

Took a little time for the story to build but ended up being a rather satisfying read.

The Rest of It:

This will be short because my hand is a hurtin’!

This story is a mix of old and new and leaps back and forth in the telling. Part war story, part crime fiction. The war story involves the Norwegian’s fight against the Russians which leads up to the creation of a neo-Nazi movement in Oslo right around the turn of the 21st century.

In the present day, Officer Harry Hole accidentally shoots a secret service agent and is given a “promotion” which basically means that he is assigned to a glorified desk job. However, when he realizes that the shell casings from that day appear to be from a weapon that is no longer around, he digs deeper and what he finds goes all the way back to WWII.

The Redbreast is the third book in the series featuring Detective Harry Hole but it was not my first time meeting Harry. No, I started with book #5 The Devil’s Star and have been reading them out-of-order ever since. The books are wonderful but they have been translated out-of-order which makes it ~~difficult~~ impossible to read them in order. In fact, the first two books are not available anywhere so you make do with what you can get.

However, the evolution of Harry as a person is what keeps me reading and I don’t mind taking these trips back into his past to see how he started out. The latest books in the series seem tighter and more fast paced whereas the older books include quite a bit of set-up. The first half of The Redbreast was very slow and tedious for me, but once I passed the halfway mark I was in familiar territory and loving every minute.

Nesbo’s books contain a sophisticated air that I don’t normally detect in American crime fiction. The tone is a bit different and although I can’t quite put my finger on why, it works for me. If you enjoy well-written crime fiction, you cannot go wrong with this series. Even if you have to read them out-of-order.

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The City & The City
By China Mieville
(Del Rey, Paperback, 9780345497529, April 2010, 352pp.)

The Short of It:

Not your typical murder mystery.

The Rest of It:

Mieville’s writing has always intimidated me. In the past, I have tried a couple of times to read this one, only to put it right back down again. However, Care and a host of others decided via Twitter to read it together, and since they made it sound so doable, and not at all intimidating, I decided to join them.

This time around, I was not intimidated and in fact found myself marveling over the world Mieville created. This is really a murder mystery at heart, but it’s such a unique setting, that you can’t help but wonder what is going on in that mind of his.

I have to include this blurb from the publisher because describing it it too difficult:

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To investigate, Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to its equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the vibrant city of Ul Qoma. But this is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a seeing of the unseen.

Focus on that last line because these two cities share the same geographical space. They are differentiated by the clothes that people wear and the language that they use, but they walk alongside each other and choose to “unsee” the other. That’s right… you are walking in what is essentially a different city, yet you choose to unsee it, so therefore, it’s not there. Got it?

For the world building aspect, I give it many points but I still found myself lost at times. The vocabulary was hard to grasp and I often had to go back to re-read what I had just read. For a murder mystery, I still have yet to really understand what went down. To me, it just seemed as if the same thing was being said over and over again and that I was making little progress.

This aspect was of course, very frustrating and will probably keep me from reading any of this other books, but there was something to this one that made me want to finish it. Mainly, the respect I had for the idea itself. I felt as if I owed the author something since he constructed such an incredibly complex story for me to read.

As for the discussion, there were some Tweets along the same lines as mine (head scratching) but not much was said. Hmmm.

That said, I am glad I read it but now I am ready to move on.

Note from Ti: I also listened to this on audio in addition to reading it in print and it had the same, head scratching effect on me.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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