There’s a challenge for any author of a successful long-running series to try and break free and write a standalone work. For Jo Nesbø, his Harry Hole series continues to sell millions of copies worldwide, a trend that looks only to increase with the forthcoming Netflix adaptation. Nesbø’s latest offering, The Wolf Hour, isn’t a Harry Hole novel – though it might as well be.
The bulk of The Wolf Hour takes us to 2016 Minneapolis, where a serial killer is on the streets. Despite being set in the USA, there are plenty of Norwegian links for Nesbø to explore, Minnesota being a favoured spot for many Norse emigrants to settle. Despite the centuries of settlement, there’s still a sense of the outsider for the Norwegian descendants of those pioneer settlers – a sense of not quite belonging that haunts Minneapolis Police Department Detective Bob Oz, his surname an anglicised version of his ancestors’ original Norwegian Aass.
Clad in a yellow cashmere coat, Oz does little to blend in, his methods seen by his colleagues as unconventional as his attire. His reputation as a lone wolf is not helped by demons in his past – demons compounded by Oz’s tendency to eschew antidepressants in favour of alcohol, traits all too familiar in Nesbø’s more famous detective.
The killer in The Wolf Hour is equally tormented, with Nesbø switching narrative between killer and detective to give insight into two troubled minds. Who the killer is, as one would expect, remains a cleverly manipulative twist until the end of the book.
Nesbø, however, gives us more than a masterfully constructed whodunnit police procedural here. He takes the opportunity of setting this book in Minneapolis to take on a wider social commentary around gang culture, immigration, race, and gun culture. The central tale is bookended by a writer drafting his own version of the story six years later, at a time when the city is coming to terms with the death of George Floyd. It adds a contemporary twist to the work and gives the opportunity to explore some of the moral considerations on crime, gun culture, and police corruption.
The bookend device, however, is not entirely successful, seeming slightly strained and at odds with the twisting narrative of the main plot. There’s a feeling that you could easily skip the later chapters without diminishing the central story.
There’s also a sense that this could all too easily have been a Harry Hole instalment, with the characters of Oz and Hole easily interchangeable. In fact, it takes an effort not to compare the two while reading The Wolf Hour. Perhaps that’s testament to Nesbø’s skill in drafting such a strong character in Hole originally. New readers coming to his work through The Wolf Hour will certainly see the book with fresher eyes. It’s not a criticism – just another unsolved question in the ever-expanding Nesbø universe.
Wolf Hour by Jo Nesbø, translated by Robert Ferguson, is published by Harvill Secker.
Written by: Glen Pearce, Content Creator at Nordic Watchlist
