Book Review: Phantom by Jo Nesbo

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There was a time when Jo Nesbo was called “the next Stieg Larsson”. Not any more. The Norwegian crime writer has sold over 14 million books worldwide as well as having been translated into 40 languages.  Since I began reading Nesbo last year,  I've found that his publisher has been playing fast and loose with publishing dates. In Nesbo’s novels featuring the detective Harry Hole, there are 9. But his publisher will publish a new Harry Hole novel in the UK and US before publishing an old one. It makes it very hard to try and keep up with where Harry was the last time you saw him. Now let’s deal with the name, Harry Hole. There are some people in the US who would put this bull’s eye of a name on their kid. I had to find out if this was the name used in the Norwegian language novels. I wrote a review on Amazon UK and asked if someone would respond to my question, “Is his name really Harry Hole or is it Lars something?” I got an answer from a UK reader. He led me to the BBC Worldwide Book Club which had an interview with Nesbo. He was asked to pronounce Harry Hole in Norwegian. Here it is phonetically: Hurree Who-la. Read more...