Jo Nesbo. Killing Moon. 2022. Toronto: Random House Canada (translation), 2023.
Welcome back, Harry Hole! I feared we would never meet again. And there he is, slouched over a bar in Hollywood, Los Angeles, instead of Oslo, his native habitat. Very cruel times fell on Harry the last we saw him (in Knife, LL204).
GORE FOREWARN: After I typed the above, second thoughts rushed in. Is Nesbo going the same way as author Lars Kepler?! Fair warning that the novel has graphic scenes of a psycho putting his twisted thoughts to work. That's going beyond noir into gruesome in a few spots; it stymies me because I don't like it, yet Nesbo clearly thinks it has value for characterization and plot. Not to forget that Scandi-Noir writers sometimes seem to compete for the most bizarre murders. Believing Nesbo's ahead of his genre in creativity and literacy, I forgive him this time.
Harry's only friend seems to be the vivacious seventy-something Lucille who frequents the same bar, hoping to avoid her debt collectors. She fails: a Mexican gang takes her hostage, learning that Harry can possibly bring them the huge amount she owes. If he fails within ten days, she dies. Where would broke Harry get that kind of money? From real estate tycoon Markus Røed. Of two missing women in Oslo, the disfigured body of one has been found; Røed is being smeared as a potential killer by the excited media, although there's no evidence. Røed wants Harry, Norway's most gifted (but unemployed) detective to save his reputation by finding the real killer; he's willing to pay whatever Harry demands.
So Harry's away to Oslo, signing a contract with Røed, assembling a small team for brainstorming, and reacquainting himself with police friends; with few exceptions, most of them welcome his parallel investigation. They include Katrine Bratt, head of the Crime Squad and mother of his only child, and friend, morgue technician Alexandra Sturdza. Police politics aside, it's a tough row to hoe with no clues, but Harry figures out where the second body is, giving credit to the cops. He eliminates Røed from suspicion, but when the second, then a third, body shows up, the police arrest Røed. At that point the money to release Lucille is sent as agreed. But they are all wrong.
Biology has a special role to play in this most twisted plot ever. The scientific basis is real, merely magnified in effect. Harry is low key as his assignment begins, working through his personal past tragedy at the same time, savouring his little son. Perhaps a downside is the reader being privy to the identity and disturbing activities of the real killer. Then another first rate, heart-stopping deadline issues. It's all more than worth glossing over the distasteful (gruesome) bits. Nesbo leaves his peers in the shade.
One-liners
▪ "Moreover, considering what happened to his wife, coupled with his unstable nature and substance abuse, I can't imagine him functioning in a murder investigation." (15)
▪ "My fee is to be paid should the police—with or without my assistance—find the presumed guilty party within the next nine days." (69)
▪ "You can imagine what a defeat it would be for the Chief Superintendent and Kripos if you solve the case before us." (86)
▪ "Seriously, Hole, you're thinking our team should consist of a hospitalized cancer patient, a policeman under investigation for corruption and a man who drives a taxi?" (114)
▪ He had wanted to drink and drink until there was nothing left, no liquor, no pain, no Harry Hole. (203)
▪ He squeezed even harder and felt the power, the thrill, that he could squeeze the juice out of this anti-human. (337)
Multi-liners
▪ How much should and could she include Harry in things? For herself, she wanted to have as little as possible to do with Harry and Harry's life. (163)
▪ "I warned you. Don't involve Hole. Yet you did it anyway." (198)
▪ "Don't get confused," Harry said. "It's not because I like you. It's because I have use for you." (203)
▪ That was what he missed the most. His woman, Rakel, who understood and accepted most things about her weird husband. (241)
▪ Did Harry only feel this way because the certainty that he was the father of the child had been planted in him? Or was it something more physical or biological, something in the blood calling, pulling two people helplessly towards one another? (296)
▪ Harry turned to Krohn. "I'm guessing that now I am fired?" (337)
▪ Jibran smiled. "No, the parasite is called Toxoplasma gondii and is actually one of the most common in the world. (373)
Dennis Lehane. Small Mercies. USA: HarperCollins, 2023.
Lehane transports us into 1974 Boston when racial tensions were at their height, when busing students out of their home areas to other schools was coming into effect. Integration. Mary Pat Fennessy is typical of South Boston ("Southie") residents in her Irish heritage, her limited view of the world, her tough working class vulgarity, and not-so-casual racism. Mary Pat and her neighbours in the Commonwealth projects are protesting with signs and marches and rallies. Her daughter Jules is among those to be bused to a currently all-black high school. Southie is close to explosion and woe betide any black person who might wander by. Which is exactly as Lehane tells it. Auggie Williamson's car, passing through on his way home, breaks down; the upshot is his death on the nearby subway tracks, having been chased by ranting white teenagers.
Jules Fennessy disappears that night. Mary Pat is strung out with anxiety, seeking, searching for days. If there's one thing not typical about Mary Pat, it's her hard-boiled nature, no fear of street fights to the finish. She disturbs the status quo, the Southie gang rule, by boldly questioning their leaders. Anything to find out where Jules is. Even warned off, she makes herself a target for Marty Butler's gang by reporting Jules to police missing persons; detective Bobby Coyne is not without empathy. He tells her Jules was one of the teenagers in the subway that night and Mary Pat believes she's dead because of it; she's already lost her son to the pervasive presence of illegal drugs. The killer/s will pay for this. As for Bobby, he needs real evidence about who killed whom.
Mary Pat instigates a furious rampage against anyone involved that night, including gang members, the likes of which are spectacular. Against the realistic backdrop of impending street warfare, she's a dynamo fuelled by grief. What a feat: Lehane has created a powerful story to breathless effect. Total immersion in time and space—the characters, the attitudes, the lingo, the streets, the big squabbling families. I'm blown away; surely no one could be unmoved upon reading Small Mercies.
Mary Pat
▪ Most people would sooner pick a fight with a stray dog with a taste for flesh than fuck with a Southie chick who grew up in the PJs. (6)
▪ "Noel never touched heroin in Vietnam," she says, and it sounds like a weak argument when it leaves her mouth. "He got hooked here. Right here." (41)
▪ It's pure street fighting like she hasn't done since she was jumped by three girls at Old Colony back in high school. (142)
▪ "I can pull this trigger right now, and no court in the country will convict me. Probably give me a fucking medal. So, George, how would you like to proceed?" (208-9)
▪ "My life," she says, "was my daughter. They took my life when they took hers. I'm not a person anymore, Bobby. I'm a testament." (233)
A Few Others
▪ They raised seven kids who took their parents' pride in their neighbourhood like gospel from Christ (if Christ had been raised in Commonwealth and was prone, on general principle, to pounding the shit out of anyone who wasn't). (33-4)
▪ "You're dead to us," she says. "And when word gets out what you did here today, you'll be dead to everyone in Southie." (142)
▪ It's a Coyne family trait—if you feel happiness, duck. Because the only thing that could possibly follow happiness is pain. (158)
▪ This fucking job, Bobby thinks. You have them, they're on the ropes, ready to talk, and then some pestilent germ of a polluted idea works its way into their hamster brain and they think, I can get out of this. (191)
▪ "And your little child and her racist friends, who were all raised by racist parents just like you, were sent out into the world like little fucking hand grenades of hate and stupidity and, and, you can go fuck yourself, Mary Pat, if you think for one second I'm okay with that." (252)
Uneasy Acquaintances
Bobby is struck by the notion that something both irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable lives at the core of this woman. And those two qualities cannot coexist. A broken person can't be unbreakable. An unbreakable person can't be broken. And yet here sits Mary Pat Fennessy, broken but unbreakable. The paradox scares the shit out of Bobby. He's met people over the course of his life who he truly believes existed as the ancient shamans did, with one foot in each world: this one and the one beyond. When you meet these people, it's best to give them the breadth the length of a football field, or else they may suck you right into that next world with them when they go.
Because they're going. Make no mistake. They are fucking going. (155)
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