It's not a lot of laughs being Harry Hole – "The Norwegian pronunciation is Hoola, but it's fine if you call him Hole" – the maverick cop at the centre of nine of Jo Nesbø's bestselling Scanda-noir crime thrillers. Over the past 15 years he has been shot, stabbed and beaten up countless times and has the scars to prove it, a titanium finger and a slash from mouth to ear among them. He is an alcoholic who keeps falling off the wagon. His two best friends in the police – pretty much his only friends – have both been killed and he can't get married to Rakel, his long-suffering girlfriend, because she would almost certainly be topped as well. And at the end of The Phantom, his most recent outing, he was left for dead in a sewer with two bullet wounds and rats gnawing at his body.
So are there any laughs in being Harry Hole's creator?
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