Norwegian noir dazzles

Nesbo delivers a novel you just can't put down

The Kingdom Jo Nesbo Knopf

You don't have to be a Buddhist to recognize the bad karma accumulating for the Opgard brothers, Roy and Carl, in The Kingdom, a dense, suspenseful bundle of Norwegian noir by Jo Nesbo, the author of the Harry Hole police detective series.

Melancholy, alcoholic Harry is nowhere to be found in the remote village of Os (not a typo). Instead, it's Kurt Olsen, the town sheriff, who is certain these two generally well-liked chaps — their parents died when the boys were in their late teens and Dad's car flew off a cliff — are homicidal connivers. The constable is right, of course.

The sometimes droll, sometimes affectless, occasionally enraged narrator is Roy, the older brother, a mechanic who runs the Os convenience store and gas station. A few people in town think Roy is “in love with” the younger brother he protects from bullies and other villagers. It becomes apparent, though, that the ongoing nonconsensual incest that sets an ugly chain of events in motion is of a different sort.

While emotional injury is at the centre of the novel, social change is what keeps it churning. A new expressway threatens to bypass the town and leave livelihoods in the lurch. It's Carl who returns from a real estate career in Toronto with a plan to save the economy. He wants to build a tourist hotel, and his scheme is to finance the project with villagers putting up their property as collateral. If you think uh-oh, you're right.

I have no doubt there are some lovely people in Norwegian mountain villages, but the people of Os are a sad lot — gossips, drunks, molesters, shysters, egomaniacs, jealous lovers, arsonists.

Why do mentally healthy readers want to spend time with these awful people? Writers like Nesbo have that knack for instilling just enough humanity in their miscreants that we keep hoping they might, if not repent, then at least acknowledge their moral scuzziness.

Or, being morally imperfect ourselves, we sort of hope they don't get caught — at least not yet.