Harry Hole has always been disreputable and has always struggled with demons – but never as much as in "Knife", the twelfth book in Jo Nesbø’s series featuring the hard-drinking special investigator.
Twenty-two years since Jo Nesbø made his debut with The Bat, the 59-year-old Norwegian is firmly established as one of the world’s most popular crime writers. According to his publishers, his international sales currently stand at around 40 million, his books have been translated into 50 languages, and there is nothing to suggest that his popularity is on the wane. When Knife was published in the early summer, it didn’t just shoot to the top of the best-seller list in Norway, but in the United Kingdom too. It has since topped the charts in five other countries and made it into the top five in as many more. And there are still plenty of markets where Knife has yet to be published.
Simplistic classification
Alongside authors such as Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbø can also take much of the credit for the establishment of “Nordic noir” (or “Scandinavian noir”, as some prefer to call it) as a distinct crime genre, whether in book, TV or film.
If we are to believe Wikipedia, what makes Nordic noir so distinctive the tension between the calm, smoothly functioning welfare state and its dark undercurrents of murder, sexual violence and racism. At the same time, the novel’s protagonist is often a true anti-hero with an abundance of personal problems, the dialogue is deadpan and the reader is faced with complex moral issues.
But Jo Nesbø has his doubts.
“I feel that Nordic noir is used as a rather simplistic classification, where the important – perhaps the
only? – common denominator is that we come from Sweden, Denmark, Iceland or Norway. I grew up with a father who was brought up in the US. So at my childhood home in Molde there were always lots of American books and that influenced me. So it’s reasonable to think that, as an author, I’ve probably drawn as much of my inspiration from American as from Scandinavian literature,” Nesbø comments.
Even so, he realises he also has one foot firmly planted in the Norwegian tradition, while believing that writing is often a reaction to reading.
“As an author or musician, everything you’ve heard and read eventually ends up in the grooves or the lines. You become like limestone: you absorb stuff and then something is filtered out,” Nesbø says, before stopping, a bit pensively.
“Did I say grooves, like on a vinyl album? Now I’m really showing my age!”
From pop band to crime
Maybe Nesbø’s reference to grooves isn’t so strange given that he had already made a name for himself as a pop star before making his writing debut. In 1994 his band, Di Derre, released an album called Jenter og sånn (Girls and stuff), which ended up being that year’s top-selling album in Norway.
The band was so successful for so many years that when Nesbø fancied trying his hand as an author, he hid behind the pseudonym Kim Erik Lokker when he submitted the manuscript of The Bat to Norwegian publisher, Aschehoug.
“The pseudonym served as a safety net. I wanted to be certain that my manuscript would be assessed according to standard literary criteria, and that being the case, it’s a good idea to use a name nobody associates with anything else,” Jo Nesbø told me back in autumn 1997 when The Bat was about to be launched in Norway.
As everybody knows, the book wasn’t just published (with Jo Nesbø’s name on the spine). It also became a runaway success and marked the start of an extraordinary adventure.
Nesbø thinks his background as the songwriter in a pop band helped him as a writer.
“Traditionally pop songs have acompact form, consisting of verse and chorus. You have to settle for suggesting something in the lyrics and leave the rest up to the imagination and intelligence of your listeners. You give a sign and then you have to trust them to be bright enough to fill in the gaps. It’s a bit like that when you write crime novels. You leave a lot up to the reader.”
Good plot builder
According to the critics, Jo Nesbø has a unique talent for plot construction, building in sophisticated tripwires along the way. His own view is that crime novelists are duty-bound to manipulate their readers by creating expectations that can then abruptly shift, leading the reader in a totally unexpected direction.
“When you get the solution to a crime mystery, it should be like the timing in a sketch. You give the audience the punch line a fraction of a second before they get it. It has to be at once surprising and enlightening. It shouldn’t prompt a puzzled
“What?” but a ringing “Of course!”.
“You have to get the plot in place first to achieve that. Do you have a particular method for developing tentative ideas into finished crime novels?”
“Not really. As a rule, the ideas just come to me. And then it’s a matter of seizing hold of them – though not uncritically. There’s no getting away from the fact that not all ideas are as good as they may appear at first glance. So it’s important to maintain your critical eye and take the idea around the block a few times before you continue.”
In Knife, Harry Hole finds himself in a bigger life crisis than ever before. He has been thrown out of the house by his beloved Rakel and is easing the pain of the breakup as best he can. Which, for Hole, means drowning his sorrows in alcohol.
Jo Nesbø just smiles when asked about Harry Hole’s fate:
“I have a storyline about what will happen to Harry Hole, and I’ve had it since the third Hole book, Redbreast. But within the framework I’ve set up, I have plenty of room for manoeuvre.“
Defends the violence in his books
Although Jo Nesbø has millions of fans, some people have also criticised him for the explicit depictions of violence in many of his books. The violence is far less prominent and considerably more subdued in Knife but the author very firmly rejects the notion that this marks some kind of self-critical break with a previous romanticisation of violence.
“I will always defend my right to use violence as a literary device. The fact that there is less violence in Knife is simply down to the fact that this story doesn’t need violence as much as other Harry Hole books. In this year’s book, there’s more focus on Hole and less on the evil out there needing to be combated. This is a different kind of story,” says Nesbø, who believes it is also possible to read crime novels as anti-violence books.
“Violence is a device that helps reinforce the sense that something drastic, something absolutely crucial is at stake. Crime novels portray something most people view as unpleasant although, at the same time, humans are fascinated by violence,” says Nesbø.
He also points out that even though the newsfeed in today’s information society might suggest otherwise, there has apparently never been as little violence in the world as now. Only in fiction has it increased.
“Violence has acquired its own aesthetic, divorced from real life violence,” says the author, who will be taking a trip to Frankfurt during the book fair in October.
“I don’t remember the details, but what I do know is that I’ll have a pretty packed schedule for a day-and-ahalf,” smiles Nesbø, saying that he’ll “take in Frankfurt” on his way home to Oslo from a climbing trip in Greece.
“Climbing helps me unwind and at the same time, it represents a challenge. You see the rock face and ask yourself: will I be able to climb it? The only way to find out is to try!”