I’m not sure what to think about Harry Hole (pronounced “WHO-leh.” You’re welcome), Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s series detective who’s catching on very well in the current vogue for Scandinavian mysteries.

In The Devil’s Star, Harry displays one characteristic that I’ve grown very weary of in fictional detectives. He’s a mess in his personal life. He’s an alcoholic, it’s ruining his job and his relationships, and he doesn’t care enough about himself to fight for his life. He’s a superior police detective, but lately he hasn’t come to work for days at a time. He loves a woman who loves him – and her son adores him – but he’s stepping back from them, afraid of commitment and failure, haunted by profound fatalism.

But it’s high summer, “holiday season” in Oslo, and the police are operating with a skeleton force. When his supervisor (who’s name is Bjarne Møller – an homage to the 1970s American cop comedy?) needs to send two detectives to a murder scene, he can find no alternative to calling Harry, and teaming him up with his worst enemy – Detective Tom Waaler, who Harry is convinced is not only corrupt, but a murderer.

The murder victim shows marks of ritual – one finger has been cut off, and a star-shaped diamond left on the body. Soon there’s another similar murder, and another, and it becomes a full-fledged serial case.

I was fairly impatient with the first half of the book, where Harry stumbles (sometimes literally) around, either drunk or hung over most of the time, pushing away all attempts to help him. But in the second half things start moving, and Harry comes to life at last, and I was pleased pretty well by that part. The final showdown was exciting and effective.

Attitudes toward religion are interesting in The Devil’s Star. Christians (Pentecostals and Orthodox) show up – I’m not entirely sure why, actually – and are not depicted as entire idiots. Harry does take one swipe at Christianity (unfair, in my view), but we are also told that he believes in the soul, and a formula he often repeats, “Paradoxes don’t happen,” is flatly contradicted by another character, who seems to know what she’s talking about.

All in all I liked The Devil’s Star better than I thought I would. Cautions for language, gore, and mature themes (some of them pretty kinky).