The Bat: Read the first thrilling Harry Hole novel from the No.1 Sunday Times bestseller (Harry Hole, 1)

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During this time Harry and Andrew have spent increasing time at the bar Inger worked out, meeting all sorts of characters. The Australian authorities had recovered her body from the sea after someone had beaten and raped her. Harry jumps on the case, seemingly none too excited to be there, bringing into questions why he was the one sent on this mission, but nonetheless being as good a detective as he can be. I fell for blonde, Norwegian Harry, and found myself rooting for him and agonizing over his missteps. There are several digressions into the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the continent as well as a bit of a history lesson thrown in, too.

I am going to read the next book in the series just because I have to see how he survives the situation he has created. He was on the point of grabbing a taxi when a black man wearing light blue jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, and with an unusually broad nose and dark, curly hair plowed a furrow between the signs and came striding ­toward him. Andy Hoban of Sunday Express gave a rating [a] of 5/5 and noted "Nesbo’s principal characters are both credible and well-drawn and it is fantastic to see a younger Harry, a more loquacious Harry.Harry then begins to link the path of the circus with the murders, and sees that they are shockingly close, with a few minor discrepancies. The cliffs plunged down in front of them, and way below the ocean breakers ended their long voyage in a thunderous crescendo among the rocks.

The big difference is Australia, which Nesbø, seeing it through the eyes of both a tourist and a cultural pathologist, makes you wonder how much different it is from Norway after all. All the reports list Harry as the passenger, and he is restricted from telling anyone the truth that eats away at him. Hole (Holy) is the usual flawed character; recovering/back-sliding alcoholic, not universally liked or respected by his own Police Department transported like other before him to the land down-under.For security reasons it could only be tipped back a little, and his lumbar region had almost crumbled by the time they reached Singapore. I knew I wasn’t part of Nesbø’s target audience when he took the time to explain where the phrase “Pavlov’s dogs” comes from.

When he eventually works out who the killer is, having led his Australian colleagues down a few blind alleys, he almost instantly has deep insight into who he is, which made me wonder why he hadn’t worked it out sooner.Harry, in a ridiculous drunken mess, attempts to do more detective work, meeting up with a hooker who knew Andrew and Otto well. Murder, especially one which hasn’t been cleared up, isn’t a good advert for the town, so we’re doing what we can. Pavlov and his experiments in conditioning is one of those things that I can’t believe isn’t widely known. However, the passenger seat was so full of papers, cassettes and general rubbish that Harry squeezed into the back.

Since the book was translated into English in England, American readers may find the prose a bit awkward in spots.For some reason his Australian colleague was wearing a tight suit today, and Harry thought the broad-­shouldered black man looked a bit comical as he rolled and pitched up the path in front of him to the viewpoint. What’s surprising about this book is the laidback pace, in comparison to something like Killing Moon which moved fast as there was a set deadline to solve the case in that work.