Reviews by irishblue

The Bat is the legendary first novel from the worldwide phenomenon Jo Nesbo.

Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can.

He's not supposed to get too involved

When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will talk only to Harry.

Harry is a n alcoholic, and he falls off the wagon while on assignment, missing the flight home, when the case goes cole. Life goes on and his dedication to solving the puzzle is still intact.

I loved this when I read it to my kids, when they were little. They loved it and it was a nightly ritual to act out the voices.

This book is based in Stalin era USSR, where there was "no" crime, at least officially. In fact, there were no police. All "crime" was investigated as disloyalty to the state, by a militia. Each militia was a separate force with little or no communication between them. As a result when a serial killer was actively mutilating children, there was no recognition of the crime as that of a serial killer. In fact, individual militias executed homosexuals and hobos indiscriminately assuming the cases were solved. One member of the KGB recognised the scale of the crimes, their connection, and despite the threat to his career, carried out a full investigation, beneath the radar. The investigation proceeds with severe hardship to the KGB officer and his family. This book, is very well written and is evocative of the lives of ordinary people in Russia at that time. One cannot help feeling a level of awe for people who can survive in this hardship, and could even give sn insight into the Russian psyche.