Book: Cockroaches: An early Harry Hole caseAuthor: Jo NesboPublisher: Harvill SeckerPages: 400Price: Rs. 478

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Harry Hole is perspiring and sniffing traffic fumes. He has made up his mind: he does not like Bangkok. He wants to hold his breath, do his job and get on the first, not necessarily best, plane back to Oslo. But on his hands is the task to solve the murder of the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand, whose body has been found in a seedy motel. To further his woes, the powers that be, sitting in Norway, expect a cover-up from him. However, as he stumbles upon incendiary secrets that no one bargained for, Hole finds it difficult to stick to his superior’s brief.The eccentric detective is back and in his elements, though his inner demons continue to haunt him as he struggles to stay sober. Second in the Harry Hole series and written in 1998, Jo Nesbo’s Cockroaches has been translated into English only recently. While tacitly swinging the needle of suspicion from one character to another, the bestselling Scandinavian author and musician compels the reader to doubt every dramatis persona. Nesbo minces no words as he nonchalantly presents a socially blighted Bangkok where everything is steaming, drowned in traffic, pollution and sex trade. It is difficult, even for someone with very little knowledge about Thailand, to not enter Nesbo’s visualisation. But, though the novel takes a grip early on and accelerates towards the climax, the reigning king of Nordic noir misses the mark towards the end as the story enters a flurry and complicate plot. You come out of the read a tad cheated as if being served a mediocre dessert after a lavish meal. After offering a complete series of Hole’s extraordinary crime chase, this one comes across as lukewarm.Though not among the best in the Hole series, and clearly the reason why it was not translated earlier, it will be not be fair to judge Nesbo’s writing by Cockroaches as it was only his second book. But if you’re a stickler for crime fiction, this one is not to be missed. Also, it is only appropriate to mention Don Bartlett, who does not allow the reader to realise even once that the book is a translation.