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[books 2011] Jo Nesbo
Aug. 18th, 2011 01:18 pm45. The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
Nesbo is a Norwegian detective thriller writer, billed on the front of the latest run of his paperbacks as "the new Stieg Larsson". I've been meaning to try his stuff for a while, and on my last-but-one trip to Waterstones this was the book I got for half price as I'd already purchased half their inventory.
It starts off in a quite confused and disjointed fashion, but about halfway through I worked out what he was doing by including so much seemingly irrelevent back-story - narrowing down the field of possible assassins to five people, turning it in to something more like a traditional country-house mystery with a limited pool of suspects, while otherwise keeping a contemporary feel. Clever.
I still think it's longer than it needs to be, and it's oddly (though not badly) paced in that the first murder doesn't occur until almost halfway through. One of the sub-plots could have come straight from Larsson, but this book may have come first.
Having said that, for large chunks of it, I couldn't put it down. I'll definitely be reading more of his stuff, but probably getting them out of the library rather than buying.
Nesbo is a Norwegian detective thriller writer, billed on the front of the latest run of his paperbacks as "the new Stieg Larsson". I've been meaning to try his stuff for a while, and on my last-but-one trip to Waterstones this was the book I got for half price as I'd already purchased half their inventory.
It starts off in a quite confused and disjointed fashion, but about halfway through I worked out what he was doing by including so much seemingly irrelevent back-story - narrowing down the field of possible assassins to five people, turning it in to something more like a traditional country-house mystery with a limited pool of suspects, while otherwise keeping a contemporary feel. Clever.
I still think it's longer than it needs to be, and it's oddly (though not badly) paced in that the first murder doesn't occur until almost halfway through. One of the sub-plots could have come straight from Larsson, but this book may have come first.
Having said that, for large chunks of it, I couldn't put it down. I'll definitely be reading more of his stuff, but probably getting them out of the library rather than buying.
