MacBeth by Jo Nesbo

[Rockfish1]

"MacBeth" is probably Shakespeare's best known tragedy. My favorite Scandinavian writer Jo Nesbo has just updated that classic with his own MacBeth. Instead of the tragic thane who lost everything to his ambition for the Scottish kingship, we have a tragic SWAT leader who loses all to become chief of police for an unnamed Scottish city in the bleak 1970s. Every character in Shakespeare's MacBeth appears in Nesbo's, by name. Even the witches appear (as funky Asian hookers) to embolden MacBeth to his doom with ambiguous prophecies. I'm listening to the audiobook, with its wonderful Scottish reader.

If you like books and you like crime fiction, you will just f#cking love Jo Nesbo. If you'd rather start with a movie, watch "Headhunters", which will make you forget there are subtitles as it snowballs vertiginously off various cliffs. That's also a book, so you could read it, but the real thing with Nesbo is his Harry Hole series ("Hole" is pronounced "hoo-la" where Nesbo comes from.)

Nesbo is an international sensation. If you like crime fiction, you'd be happy you met him.

 

[twenty02]

"MacBeth" is probably Shakespeare's best known tragedy. My favorite Scandinavian writer Jo Nesbo has just updated that classic with his own MacBeth. Instead of the tragic thane who lost everything to his ambition for the Scottish kingship, we have a tragic SWAT leader who loses all to become chief of police for an unnamed Scottish city in the bleak 1970s. Every character in Shakespeare's MacBeth appears in Nesbo's, by name. Even the witches appear (as funky Asian hookers) to embolden MacBeth to his doom with ambiguous prophecies. I'm listening to the audiobook, with its wonderful Scottish reader.

If you like books and you like crime fiction, you will just f#cking love Jo Nesbo. If you'd rather start with a movie, watch "Headhunters", which will make you forget there are subtitles as it snowballs vertiginously off various cliffs. That's also a book, so you could read it, but the real thing with Nesbo is his Harry Hole series ("Hole" is pronounced "hoo-la" where Nesbo comes from.)

Nesbo is an international sensation. If you like crime fiction, you'd be happy you met him.

I've been on a nonfiction trend for a while, but this author sounds intriguing

 

[Rockfish1]

I've been on a nonfiction trend for a while, but this author sounds intriguing

I'm always on the lookout for writers of reliably good series, and if you're one of those Nesbo could be a deep dive. And as much as I enjoy nonfiction (I'll drop another shout out for Sapiens), I think I've actually learned and grown more from fiction. (The Quiet American is the best history of America in Vietnam that I've ever read, but it's a novel written before we replaced the French.) This has often been particularly true when I read fiction from other places, and for some reason Scandinavia has really kicked ass (for my sensibilities). If you're looking for something out of the ordinary that will still check every box, take a look at Jo Nesbo.

 

[Thyrsis]

I'm always on the lookout for writers of reliably good series, and if you're one of those Nesbo could be a deep dive. And as much as I enjoy nonfiction (I'll drop another shout out for Sapiens), I think I've actually learned and grown more from fiction. (The Quiet American is the best history of America in Vietnam that I've ever read, but it's a novel written before we replaced the French.) This has often been particularly true when I read fiction from other places, and for some reason Scandinavia has really kicked ass (for my sensibilities). If you're looking for something out of the ordinary that will still check every box, take a look at Jo Nesbo.

Is that the sort of thing you need to read in sequence?

 

[Noodle]

I'm always on the lookout for writers of reliably good series, and if you're one of those Nesbo could be a deep dive. And as much as I enjoy nonfiction (I'll drop another shout out for Sapiens), I think I've actually learned and grown more from fiction. (The Quiet American is the best history of America in Vietnam that I've ever read, but it's a novel written before we replaced the French.) This has often been particularly true when I read fiction from other places, and for some reason Scandinavia has really kicked ass (for my sensibilities). If you're looking for something out of the ordinary that will still check every box, take a look at Jo Nesbo.

Speaking of Sapiens...a great website of the same name (plus a great podcast too): https://www.sapiens.org/

Oh, and I really liked the book.

 

[Rockfish1]

Is that the sort of thing you need to read in sequence?

The Harry Hole series is chronological and continuous. While each book is self-contained, each book is better in order. MacBeth is completely out of sequence, as is Headhunter.

 

[Rockfish1]

Speaking of Sapiens...a great website of the same name (plus a great podcast too): https://www.sapiens.org/

Oh, and I really liked the book.

I'm not surprised you liked Sapiens. It's hard for me to imagine how you wouldn't. Here's a thing that made me happy: While I was listening to it, my daughter recommended that I listen to it.

 

[Zizkov]

"MacBeth" is probably Shakespeare's best known tragedy. My favorite Scandinavian writer Jo Nesbo has just updated that classic with his own MacBeth. Instead of the tragic thane who lost everything to his ambition for the Scottish kingship, we have a tragic SWAT leader who loses all to become chief of police for an unnamed Scottish city in the bleak 1970s. Every character in Shakespeare's MacBeth appears in Nesbo's, by name. Even the witches appear (as funky Asian hookers) to embolden MacBeth to his doom with ambiguous prophecies. I'm listening to the audiobook, with its wonderful Scottish reader.

If you like books and you like crime fiction, you will just f#cking love Jo Nesbo. If you'd rather start with a movie, watch "Headhunters", which will make you forget there are subtitles as it snowballs vertiginously off various cliffs. That's also a book, so you could read it, but the real thing with Nesbo is his Harry Hole series ("Hole" is pronounced "hoo-la" where Nesbo comes from.)

Nesbo is an international sensation. If you like crime fiction, you'd be happy you met him.

I have considered picking up a Nesbo book for ages, he is widly popular here. Any suggestions for a good book to start with?

I am currently reading The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South, which is a quite disturbing story.

Synopsis:

After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist chronicles how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system--a relic of the Jim Crow era--failed to deliver justice for its citizens and recounts the horrifying story of the two men who built successful careers on the back of this system. For nearly two decades, medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. Michael West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart.

Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, and raise sobering questions about our criminal justice system's ability to address them.

 

[sglowrider]

I've been on a nonfiction trend for a while, but this author sounds intriguing

Age catching up on you.

 

[Rockfish1]

I have considered picking up a Nesbo book for ages, he is widly popular here. Any suggestions for a good book to start with?

I am currently reading The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South, which is a quite disturbing story.

Synopsis:

After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist chronicles how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system--a relic of the Jim Crow era--failed to deliver justice for its citizens and recounts the horrifying story of the two men who built successful careers on the back of this system. For nearly two decades, medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. Michael West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart.

Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, and raise sobering questions about our criminal justice system's ability to address them.

Here is a list of the Harry Hole books in the order they were published in Norway. I didn't start reading until the third book (The Redbreast) because the first two weren't initially released in the United States. I should probably go back and read them, but I haven't.

I recently heard Radley Balko give a talk about The Cadaver King (at a Federalist Society luncheon, of all places). Fascinating stuff. I've got that on my list.

 

[iu_a_att]

Will check these out...like Jo Nesbo a great deal.

 

[zeke4ahs]

Sapiens sounds like one I would really enjoy listening to. Going to download it.