Another CF series … a new detective inspector … another Harry …

I am now in waiting mode … very impatient waiting mode, actually.  I am waiting for the next ‘DCI Banks’ novel, Sleeping in the Ground.  The e-book is out, I think, but I am not sure.  I am waiting for the real book.  I am also waiting for the next Harry Bosch novel, Two Kinds of Truth.  But the release date is far off and there is far less impatience. 

Abids offered some solace a couple of weeks ago and I bought those Ross Macdonald novels with the birthday gift money, but even before these books came in I was looking at another series with another inspector.  I had done my basic online research on some ‘target’ writers almost a year back and had finalized some names.  Jo Nesbo’s name was being seen and heard a lot.  Harry Hole was his inspector.  And I had also found a Harry Hole novel at Abids around the same time, but since it was a ‘mid-series’ novel, I wanted to wait till I got the first title in the series.  Anyway, that was a year ago, and now I wanted a new series. 

I wanted to go back to Scandinavia.  Of course, it all started in Sweden with the Inspector Beck series and then Henning Mankell came with his Inspector Wallander … and yeah, Stieg Larsson too … and there are a number of other Scandinavian crime fiction writers that I am waiting to read.  Yeah, there is a whole school of Swedish and Nordish noir writing out there. 

And there it was … all decided and all set … Jo Nesbo it was going to be.  And since price was not going to be a great concern because I was going for secondhand copies and availability was checked and confirmed, I didn’t want to wait.  I got all the ten novels in the series so far from three different sellers.  And the one ‘Nesbo-Harry Hole’ novel I had found in Abids last year, I gave Vinod when we met at Abids recently.

I picked up the first novel, The Bat to read.  I was looking forward to a trip to Norway.  I had found the cold and the dim sunless Scandinavian setting in Wallander and Martin Beck novels enchanting and since then I had moved on to dark and gray Yorkshire and from there to sunny Los Angeles.  I hoped to get back to a familiar environment through Jo Nesbo’s novels.  I started reading and I saw that The Bat is set in, off all places, Australia!!  Where cold Norway and where sunny and hot Australia …!!!  Harry Hole is sent to Australia to solve the murder of a young Norwegian girl who was working in Sydney … instead of Norway, I am learning a lot about Australia … hope Harry stays in Norway in the next one …