Harry Hole

I've been sucked into some cop/detective novels lately.  Harry Hole being, specifically, the cop.  The author being Jo Nesbo, who is tiresomely called the new Stieg Larsson now that poor Mr. Larsson is dead.  Except that Mr. Nesbo is Norwegian and Mr. Larsson is Swedish, and Mr. N is not quite as good as Mr. L.

Those Dragon Tattoo books were definitely the real thing.  Outstanding.  If you haven't read them and are reading this you should put this down -- not a thing I say lightly, given my current daily audience -- and go read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  And then the other two books.  And don't say you've seen the movies because that has nothing to do with the matter at hand.

This isn't a blog about the fucking movies.

Anyway, I blew through Nesbo's "The Son" and enjoyed it quite a bit.  Then I read Nesbo's first Harry Hole novel, which I also enjoyed.  And now -- cue the heavenly choir -- I've discovered that I can download Harry Hole ebooks on my Kindle directly from the Troy Public Library.  Which is astounding on several levels, but I'm choosing not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It should be noted that one pronounces the E in Mr. Hole's name, so it sounds more like Hola, with a kind of Norwegian lilt.  Like Hoorla, maybe.  But scrunched up, like there's an umlaut or something.

I've seen Jo Nesbo on Charlie Rose and I can assure you that he speaks excellent English.  So one wonders whether, as a Norwegian novelist with an eye towards translating his work into English for the massive North American market, he created his character's name with the knowledge that it would almost certainly be pronounced like the way one pronounces hole in other circumstances.  And did that make him laugh?

On a related note, part of what got me fired up about detective novels was watching the Harry Bosch series on Amazon Instant Streaming.  That was pretty good, actually.