By Jo Nesbø https://jonesbo.com/
Translated by Seán Kinsella
Narrated by Sean Barrett
Published by Vintage Digital @vintagebooks (an Imprint of Penguin Books) https://www.penguin.co.uk/ @PenguinUKBooks
576 pages (16 hours 9 minutes) ISBN 9781529900422 (AB) 9781529920505 (PB)
Publication date 25 May 2023
Killing Moon Is book thirteen in the Harry Hole series.
I reviewed the audiobook version purchased from Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/ @audibleuk
The cover
Not exactly unique but a nice cover that manages to include some of the central aspects of the story.
The narration
My favourite audiobook narrator and I couldn’t imagine anyone else being the voice of Harry Hole.
My review
Jeffrey Bernard’s Low Life column in The Spectator magazine was famously described by Jonathan Meades as “a suicide note in weekly instalments” as he chronicled his life spent drinking in and around Soho. A lifestyle that would lead to an early grave and the notice ‘Jeffrey Bernard is unwell’ when he was incapable of filing his copy. In the recent novels in this wonderful series Harry Hole’s life appears to be following as similar trajectory.
We find Harry washed up and drinking in the kind of bar that looks interesting on the big screen, that is anything but in real life. Having lost everything important in his life and sacked from the force, he is about as far away from Oslo as he can get, in Los Angeles, and is trying to do a ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ and literally drink himself to death. He is close to the bottom but not quite there, a maxed-out credit card leads to a drink bought by an old former actress, a debt of honour and an unexpected return to Oslo.
Two young women have been gone missing, their only connection being that they attended the same party given by a notorious businessman. When the body of one woman is found he feels under intense scrutiny and asks his lawyer to help him. He is told that Harry Hole is the one to solve the case, he is far better than anyone in the police force.
This gives Harry the chance to ‘get the band back together’ for one last tour; well his motley crew of crime crackers which consists of a drug dealing taxi driver, a mendacious police officer who is nicknamed Beavis and currently suspended, and a psychologist with late stage pancreatic cancer. Those familiar with the series will instantly recognise the lineup.
If you are unfamiliar with the series then this is not a starting point, you may well still enjoy the story but a greater idea of the back story of Harry’s career is essential to understand the relevance of much that happens. Here is a man now seemingly becoming the centre of an almost Shakespearean style tragedy with no one to stop him.
The plot is mazy and crazy, which is par for the course with this series, and just when you think you are nearly there, there is one more turn, and then another. Regimentally planned or made up as he goes along, who knows, but it is wonderful storytelling. No matter how implausible the plot, which is certainly the product of an overactive imagination (or dare I say it disturbed mind) the strands always knit together to make some kind of sense.
The writing is as dark as winter in the North of Norway, with a wonderful sense of the macabre and a sparingly used pitch-black humour, which is just what we have come to expect. The translator is new to the series (the bulk being translated by Don Bartlett) and does a fine job in making the prose flow.
Harry is one of the greatest troubled cops of the genre, a simply magnificent creation who the reader is drawn to, he’s not exactly good or likeable but is impossible to ignore. Plagued throughout with depression and cursed by alcoholism, we find him at rock-bottom but still looking for redemption, or rather a variant of a Messiah Complex seeking to absorb and atone for the sins of others.
The supporting characters are well developed, provide a great foil for Harry, but also so much more as the author uses them to explore modern attitudes within Scandinavia. They are also the source of humour and the typical male arguments such as was Ringo Starr a better drummer than Keith Moon.
Harry is not exactly a misogynist but women who come into his orbit often fare badly, both physically and emotionally, yet he still manages to draw them in, like flies into a trap. A little surprising considering his now poor condition and the livid scar running from the hinge of his jaw to the corner of his mouth (read The Leopard for an explanation). Whilst they may suffer somewhat the female characters are always integral to the plot.
With any long running series there is the risk of it going on too long, such that returns become diminishing, and for me it is better to end on a high rather than spoil the legacy. Halfway through Killing Moon I posed the question to myself, after a gap of four years since Knife was it wise to return, but in the end, it was a resounding yes. There is still life in Harry as a character, whilst it may not be the absolute peak of the series it is still very good and thoroughly enjoyable. The ending is left open and I think there may well be one more outing for Harry.
Killing Moon returns Harry Hole from the depths of alcoholic despair to face another deranged killer. Mad, bad and deadly, just what the reader has come to expect.
Killing Moon can be purchased via the publisher’s website here
The author
Jo Nesbo is one of the world’s bestselling crime writers. When commissioned to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, Di Derre, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel, The Bat. His books The Leopard, Phantom, Police, The Son, The Thirst, Macbeth and Knife have all since topped the Sunday Times charts. He’s an international number one bestseller and his books are published in 50 languages, selling over 55 million copies around the world.
Source: Publisher’s website
The translator
Seán Kinsella was born in Dublin and holds an MPhil in literary translation from Trinity College Dublin. He has translated works by Åsne Seierstad and Stig Sæterbakken, among others. His translations have been long-listed for both the Best Translated Book Award and International Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Norway.
Sources: Books From Norway website
The narrator
Barrett (born 4 May 1940 in Hampstead, London, England, UK) is an English actor and voice actor.
In the early 1980s, Barrett went on to voice acting. He has performed the voices of Tik-Tok in Return to Oz, a Goblin in Labyrinth, Big Mac and other characters in TUGS, Thadius Vent’s soothsayer Goodtooth in Oscar’s Orchestra, Melchoir in the English dubbed version of the Lapitch the Little Shoemaker TV series, Roly the Pineapple in the English version of The Fruities and UrSu the Dying Master and UrZah the Ritual-Guardian in The Dark Crystal as well as additional characters in two video games The Feeble Files and Viking: Battle for Asgard. He also provided the voice for Captain Orion in Star Fleet, the English version of the 1980s Japanese puppet series X-Bomber.
He also narrated Fair Ground!, Timewatch and Dark Towers for BBC, dubbed voices in many anime films such as Roujin Z, Cyber City Oedo 808 and Dominion: Tank Police and has done voices for several audiobooks and radio stations.
In 1996, he was the narrator for the Channel 4 documentary series, Black Box. The series primarily concentrated on commercial aviation accidents, and the investigations related to them.
Barrett also worked as part of an ADR Loop Group on Aardman’s first computer-animated film Flushed Away, a voice director on Lapitch the Little Shoemaker and a dialogue director on The Fruities. He has also narrated episodes of the BBC TV series People’s Century and Dancing in the Street, as well as a number of BBC nature documentaries in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In 2011, he voiced Andre of Astora, Petrus of Thorolund and Ingward in Dark Souls.
Source: Goodreads profile
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