A Christmas contest

Season's greetings, and may the new year bring you peace and happiness.

A Detectives Beyond Borders favorite has its U.S. paperback release this week, and if you live in the U.S., you can win a copy.

The book is Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast, which explores a string of killings in 1990s Norway precipitated by strange activities on the cold, lonely Eastern Front during World War II. Among the novel's delights are its sly political humor, and that humor provides the question that can win you the book.

The Redbreast's opening chapters include an amusingly vapid radio interview with a U.S. president just arrived in Norway for a major international summit conference. In what city did this real-life conference take place? What two other world leaders also attended?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Jo Nesbø on traitors, sunshine patriots and more

The social criticism in Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast goes beyond the humorous digs at presidential pomposity and, just possibly, Norwegian parochialism that I mentioned last week. Yasir Arafat and Ehud Barak get fleeting mentions in connection with a summit meeting set to take place in Oslo as the novel opens. But another real-life politician's name resonates far more strongly: that of Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian fascist whose name became a synonym for traitor after he collaborated in the German Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II.

Nesbø has nothing but contempt for the neo-Nazis who plague 1990s Oslo, portraying them variously as apes and as children who refuse to grow up. At the same time, he is (or lets his characters be) just as hard on the "latter-day saints," Norwegians who were quick to declare their love of country — after Germany had been safely defeated. A murder late in the novel re-enacts Quisling's execution. The killer's identity makes clear Nesbø's scorn for the latter-day saints. Norwegians, those enthusiastic flag-wavers, could be just as nationalistic as Germans, he has a character say, and he means it as no compliment.

Did I mention that The Redbreast is also a murder mystery? The killings have their roots in World War II, in a cold, lonely Eastern Front outpost to which the novel flashes back frequently. Mysterious events happen there, in military hospitals and in wartime Vienna, and the moral lines are not nearly as clear as they become later. And love and betrayal, real and perceived, play as much a role as do political events.

Back in the novel's present, in 1990s Oslo, Nesbø's Harry Hole slowly uncovers the link to that World War II past, fueled by his customary mix of intuition, doggedness and alcohol, though there is far more to him than those hallmarks of the highly capable, highly angst-ridden detective.

I'd best stop before this post approaches the novel's 521 pages in length. Suffice it to say that the killing of a police officer precipitates a moving, formally surprising depiction of Hole's descent back into drink, that Nesbø knows how to make violence shocking by understating it, that he can darken a mood as few writers can, and that, boy, can he ever lay down plot lines for further novels. (Though translated into English after The Devil's Star, The Redbreast was written first and is set earlier.)

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A translation note: Don Bartlett chose not to translate most Oslo street names, a nice touch. Thus, one character lives at Vibes gate 18. This is interesting because gate is an archaic English word for street; hence the many streets in England that have gate as part of their names. Similarly, translators of Henning Mankell's novels leave untranslated street names that contain gatan. One may conclude from this that travel is broadening and that international crime fiction can be educational.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Jo Nesbo
Norwegian crime fiction
Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Poking fun at politics (Jo Nesbø, "The Redbreast")

This Norwegian author's political jokes in The Redbreast are like his funny exchange about rock and roll in The Devil's Star. Here as there, Nesbø takes an odd, unexpected approach to a subject about which it is far too easy to be far too serious.

Here's The Redbreast's little gem of a comic take on politics:

"I read that a well-known American psychologist thinks the President [of the United States] has an MPD," Ellen said.

"MPD?"

"Multiple Personality Disorder. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The psychologist thought his normal personality was not aware that the other one, the sex beast, was having relations with all these women. And that was why a Court of Impeachment couldn't accuse him of having lied under oath about it."

"Jesus," Harry said, looking up at the helicopter hovering high above them.

and

On the radio, someone speaking with a Norwegian accent asked, "Mr. President, this is the fourth visit to Norway by a sitting U.S. President. How does it feel?"

Pause.

"It's really nice to be back here. And I see it as even more important that the leaders of the state of Israel and of the Palestinian people can meet here. The key to – "

"Can you remember anything from your previous visit to Norway, Mr. President?"

"Yes, of course. In today's talks, I hope that we can – "

"What significance have Oslo and Norway had for world peace, Mr. President?"

"Norway has had an important role."

A voice without a Norwegian accent: "What concrete results does the President consider to be realistic?"

The recording was cut and someone from the studio took over.

Anyone who has suffered through the banality of an American political news conference ought to love that one. What I like are the sly buildup and the gentle yet pointed satire on a subject about which another writer might have been strident.

So, readers, give me some examples of political satire and humor from your favorite crime stories.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Jo Nesbo
Norwegian crime fiction
Scandinavian Crime Fiction