Ed McBain and Jo Nesbø, and a P.S. on Exclusivity

Jo Nesbø (born 1960) must be the crime novelist I write about most often here, and I suspect I've never even mentioned Ed McBain (1926-2005; also known as Evan Hunter, the name under which he wrote Blackboard Jungle and the screenplay for Hitchcock's The Birds). So when a new-to-the-US Nesbø novel goes on sale on the same day that a dozen of McBain's 87th Precinct mysteries, some of them over 50 years old, become available on Kindle (in the US)--you might expect me to cover the 'new' Nesbø and save the 'old' McBains for another day.

Actually, both writers are important to me. Nesbø's the newest writer I'm fervently 'following'; I followed McBain almost as devotedly for the last 20 years of his life and went to great lengths to find and read every last 87th Precinct and Matthew Hope novel from McBain's backlist. McBain seemed to write faster than Nesbø does, and a McBain novel is faster to read than a Nesbø; McBain's Steve Carella looks like a particularly straight arrow if you contrast him with Nesbø's antiheroic Harry Hole; but both writers are significant masters of the police procedural novel.

Today's new Nesbø is Harry Hole's eighth case, The Leopard, and it is very much a follow-up to The Snowman. (For the Harry Hole lineup, see here; for more on Nesbø, continue here.) It's another serial-killer novel, and, if anything, even more violent than its predecessor. Between the two books, Harry has left Oslo and begun a new life in Hong Kong. He has to be fetched back home to help his old colleagues unravel an unusually complicated case: you may find that it looks like Thomas Harris on the outside but more like Christie or Ellery Queen at its core (which, for me, is 'a good thing').

If you've read The Snowman, you probably know whether you want to read The Leopard. If you're new to Nesbø, start with the earliest available novel in the series. (Again, they're all listed here; for US readers of ebooks, the earliest currently available is The Redbreast, which introduces characters who appear in all the subsequent books.)

First edition (Permabooks [imprint
of Pocket Books], 1956)

I should mention, for the benefit of newer readers of this blog, that I've vowed not to advertise ebooks that I consider to be overpriced, and I've encouraged others not to pay double-digit prices for ebooks. That's why I link to the hardback edition of The Leopard, not the ebook. I consider even The Snowman to be overpriced in ebook in the US, although the price will probably come down in the months ahead. [UPDATE: As of 18 January 2012, the US publisher has lowered the ebook prices of each of these novels to $9.99.]

Alternatively, consider taking advantage of Amazon.com's reduced prices for one of the two earliest McBain novels just released, The Mugger (1956) or The Con Man (1957), just $4.99 each for Kindle. They're early books, but in them McBain has already hit the stride he maintained through over 50 novels in the 87th Precinct series alone. Before Hill Street Blues and before all the Law and Orders and all the C.S.I.s--and grittier than any of them--there was the ongoing saga of squad room and crime scene, extending into the private lives of the dozen or so police detectives in a single precinct in a city that doesn't call itself New York but that corresponds to New York in every detail. (Show business trivia: Q: What was Gena Rowlands' breakthrough role? A: Arguably, as Steve Carella's wife Teddy in the 1960-61 TV series 87th Precinct, adapted from the McBain novels.) In every novel there are two or three storylines that may well never converge--just like the storylines in real life…

Print editions of all 12 McBains (and the others available for Kindle next week and the week after) will appear in 2012 and will be distributed throughout the US book trade. (McBain's novels about attorney Matthew Hope, beginning with Goldilocks, will follow in September 2012.) But the ebooks will remain Kindle exclusives for the foreseeable future. The publisher, after all, is Thomas & Mercer, Amazon's new crime imprint.

(One side benefit of Amazon's new investment in [or of] McBain is the page Perspectives on McBain, where Stephen King, Lawrence Block and many others assess their indebtedness to him.)

P.S.: Exclusivity, a budding issue at Amazon, is not necessarily a good thing. I, like most other independent authors, have the option of giving Amazon the exclusive right to distribute A Kiss Before You Leave Me for at least three months. Kiss would be enrolled in a new program that lends ebooks for free to Amazon Prime members, and I'd receive a prorated share of a multimillion-dollar royalty package set aside by Amazon--but I'd have to pull Kiss from the Apple iBookstore, Sony's Reader Store, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. No one of those stores sells as many copies of Kiss as the various Amazons combined--but ebooks should work for access, not exclusivity. Excluding those other vendors would mean limiting the access of readers who depend on an EPUB-friendly device--the majority of ebook readers internationally. I don't fault Amazon for offering exclusive terms--but exclusivity would not be the best arrangement for me and my readers.

Nesbø, Harry and 'Phantom'

Jo Nesbø

In Wednesday's post I went over the lineup of the nine novels to date in Jo Nesbø's series about sometimes Oslo police inspector Harry Hole. Let's pick up the frequently asked questions where we left off.

Q: How violent are the books? I'm not big on books about serial killers.... A: Only a few of the books to date actually involve serial killings. You definitely don't need to be a fan of, say, Thomas Harris to enjoy the Harry Hole books. Violence? When I read The Snowman, it struck me as the most violent book so far, with The Devil's Star a close second, but the violence never seems gratuitous (or purely genre-driven) to me. True, the books all involve homicide investigations, including at least some forensics. And Harry does manage to get roughed up quite frequently, even for a fictional detective.

Q: Suppose I'm the one reader who never got into Stieg Larsson's books? Or Henning Mankell's? Or.... A: Not a problem. Scandinavia is just a geographic region--not the best reason to read one author rather than another. Scandinavian crime novels are all different. Even Nesbø's own novels seem to me quite different from one another. Try one. You might like it. (I suggested The Redbreast as a starting place for US readers. But not because it's in any way 'typical'.)

The 9th Harry Hole novel
German translation
Die Larve (2011)

I'm blogging about Nesbø and Harry this week because I just read the ninth book in the series, the one that will be published in the UK in March 2012 under the title Phantom. (I can't contain my enthusiasm for the book, but I'll do my utmost to keep this post spoiler-free.) Until this point I'd been playing catch-up with Nesbø; with this book I have become a follower--as addicted to the series as his hero and certain other characters in the new book are to their drugs of choice.

Harry is a recovering alcoholic with memorable lapses; the new book involves the illegal drug trade in Oslo. Phantom, appropriately enough, brought me more highs and lows, as a reader, than any other Nesbø novel. And by lows I mean not disappointments but... let's say developments from which some readers may take a while to recover. Obviously I'm still working on my recovery, three days after finishing Phantom. And speaking of following--and serials--I'm already impatient for the next book in the series. I just realized: Harry Hole is a serial. The blogger is, at least sometimes, the last to know. (Inexcusable parenthesis, especially addressed to fans of Samuel Beckett: I've had my own I-can't-go-on-I'll-go-on oscillation with Phantom and its final scenes. Try, all readers of Phantom please try, this experiment on yourselves: count the number of days or hours after finishing Phantom before you start thinking about book ten in the series.)

Speaking of trying to remain spoiler-free: by some lucky accident, I managed to read the first several chapters of Phantom without knowing certain facts about the plot. I had read only the earliest, briefest descriptions released by Nesbø's German publisher, Ullstein--which have since been replaced by longer blurbs that continue to be discreet but reveal, among other things, how the set-up of the novel relates it to the others that preceded it. In other words, I was surprised--not bowled over, more delighted, mildly but quite 'pleasantly' surprised--by parts of the set-up with which almost every future reader may be familiar before starting the book. (It was, for me, the first of the book's 'highs'. It's a high you may still be able to share--if you restrict what you read and hear about the book between now and the time you read it.)

The whole experience made me dream of an alternative universe in which readers could approach each new book in a state of comparative innocence. In which publishers didn't feel they had to give anything away for the sake of making a sale. In which bloggers, even, rivalled one another in discretion.

I've far exceeded my allotted 500 words for the day--which can be justified not by anything I've communicated about the plot of Phantom (of which I'd vowed to reveal as little as possible) but perhaps by the fact that I'll be taking several days off from blogging (although not from Twitter). I'll be on the road, and if I weigh in here at all it will be only with a comment or two rather than a scheduled post. (By the way, I'm holding off on talking about book eight in the series until closer to its US release date.) Happy reading, listening and coffee-drinking, and happy living as well--until next time.

Nesbø's Harry Hole: The Line-Up

Yesterday I finished reading Jo Nesbø's ninth and latest Harry Hole novel, and I'm still reeling from it--still on its emotional roller-coaster, to be honest. (That novel, 'in case we're interrupted', appeared in the original Norwegian in June, and in German translation under the title Die Larve this month; the anticipated English title is Phantom. [We may be interrupted by my word tally: I'm back to enforcing my self-imposed maximum length of 500 words per post.])

US mass-market paperback, 2011

Because Nesbø and Harry Hole are still new to most US readers, I'd like to run through a few general reference points (to which I gave short shrift when trying to introduce the series last March). When I finally return to speak directly about Phantom, it will be to give it a spoiler-free rave, limited mostly to how you can intensify your enjoyment of it.

So. What do you need to know about Jo Nesbø? His name is pronounced 'yoo NESS-buh' in Norwegian but often simply 'Joe NEZZ-bo' in English. He was born in 1960 and trained as an economist. Was a successful soccer player but was permanently sidelined by injuries. Worked for about a decade as a stockbroker by day and rock musician by night (vocals and guitar with the band Di Derre). Best known as author of the Harry Hole novels but has published one stand-alone thriller (Headhunters) and the Doctor Proctor series of children's books. 

And about Harry Hole (pronounced, to everyone's great relief, 'hah-ree HOO-lə')? He's an Oslo-based (later Hong Kong - based) police inspector (later ex- or acting), a recovering alcoholic. A loner in general, but capable of deep, loving, lasting-but-failed attachments. Smart. Surprisingly likeable.

There are nine novels to date in the series:

1. The Bat
2. The Cockroaches
3. The Redbreast
4. Nemesis
5. The Devil's Star
6. The Redeemer
7. The Snowman
8. The Leopard
9. Phantom

All nine have been published in Norwegian and in German translation. The first eight have been published in French. Numbers 3-8 have been published in English in the UK, with number 9 expected in March and number 1 next after that. Numbers 3-5 and 7 are available in English in the US, with number 8 announced for December and number 6 expected next after that.

Frequently asked questions begin:

Q: Do the books need to be read in order? A: All things being equal, it's desirable. Advice to US readers: start with number 3, The Redbreast [link UPDATED 5 March 2012], and read the subsequent novels in order, in so far as availability permits. The first two novels are less important to the rest than are 3 through 9 among themselves. The Bat Man is set in Australia and is referred to often in recent Hole books because it establishes Harry as one of the few Norwegians with hands-on experience hunting down a serial killer. (It was the first Nesbø I read, and, although I kept going after that, I find it the least engaging book in the series.) The second, The Cockroaches, is set in Bangkok. All the rest are set principally in Oslo and form parts of various plot arcs that interconnect them.

Next: more FAQs and more about number 9, Phantom.

Doing the Numbers, or, The Swimming Hole

Just a few words, this morning, about numbers. And thresholds.

I'm going to ignore, briefly, one of the best pieces of advice I've seen given to bloggers/tweeters, which goes something like 'No one but you cares about your own numbers; so what if you just added your 1000th follower or got your 5000th hit?'

But I'm blogging not only for what you might call read-only types; I'm blogging for everyone, potentially, and that includes people who are themselves bloggers or who might start blogging some day if they only knew how easy it is.

And I opened the door in Wednesday's post to at least a little talk about numbers when I mentioned that Monday's post about the Dickens centenary and readathon had become in less than 48 hours my sixth most-read post (of 'all time', which in the world of Jascha Writes means about 30 months). What I didn't realize at the time (because I was looking at the automatically generated most-read list that appears at the foot of every page of the blog and not at the actual numbers) was that Monday's Dickens post was in truth in a three-way tie for fourth place. By this morning, moreover, it was tied with last February's Ellery Queen post for third place. (The leader, if you will, continues to be Jo Nesbø, with my sole real Nesbø post to date scoring almost four times as many hits to date as the Dickens. Still back in the pack is determined newcomer James Hulbert, whoever that is, with respectable numbers of hits for four posts [in the top 10] relating to his novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me.)

As today's new business, I'd like to note two (additional) numbers, before they're swept away in the wash of ones and zeros in which we seem at times to be living.

Yesterday, Jascha Writes crossed the 10,000 threshold for cumulative page views ('pageviews all time history', in Blogger-speak)--thanks in no small measure to my friends Dickens and Nesbø, and, even more, to you. And, to every one of you who might have been wondering whether, if you 'gave' a blog, anyone would show up, I think this answers that question with a definitive yes.

The week's second threshold number may be less immediately significant to non-bloggers (and pre-bloggers, not-yet-bloggers), but most of the rest of you will understand. This is a Twitter number. Twitter caps at 2000 the number of people it allows you to follow--until you have enough followers yourself to justify letting that cap drift higher. The (unpublished, unofficial) threshold is currently 1820, and @jaschawrites crossed it a few days ago. Beyond this point, growth in the number of followers can become geometric again, after having been hampered in the run-up to 1820. And all of that I owe to the first 1820 and all the others to come. Thank you!

The moral of both of this week's threshold crossings, to put it succinctly, is a message of abundance: there's room here for everyone, and we create possibilities for one another and for ourselves. And that's something that we 'qualitative' types can hang on to when all the ones and zeros have moved on.

Because it isn't really a racetrack. It's a swimming hole.

Come on in....

Even More 'Readable' When the Price Is Right

First Oprah, now this.

While everyone else is congratulating Julian Barnes for winning the Man Booker Prize last night for The Sense of an Ending--at the end of what felt like a very long Booker season in which the most loaded term in public literary discourse was 'readability' (saluted by some as a genuine strength of certain books under consideration, decried by others as code for 'dumbed-down-ed-ness')--let's recognize Charles Dickens' latest triumph: Monday's post about his bicentenary and the Dickens readathon, immediately shot to sixth place (out of 84) in the list of all-time most-read entries at Jascha Writes. Dickens still has a way to go before he overtakes Jo Nesbø (who has long been in first place), but the Nesbø post has been up, collecting clicks, since March. (Soon it will be time for a 'sequel', a post about the eighth and ninth Harry Hole novels, The Leopard and Phantom.)

In that Dickens post I mentioned in passing that Amazon.com was offering some very attractive Kindle deals on Dickens titles in Penguin Classics. I recommended that you consider Pickwick Papers and the other Dickens titles to which you could surf from there. What I didn't realize at the time was that there are dozens of other Penguin Classics at Amazon prices the likes of which I haven't seen for close to three years.

In my experience, prices like this don't last. So if you take one of the links below and don't find anything special... well, that means the train has left the station. But, as of this writing, the prices for US Amazon customers are under one dollar. If you share any of my attachment to Penguin Classics, such prices for annotated editions with introductions, may just be too good to pass up.

From today's perspective, the Victorian novelist best situated to rival Dickens, is of course George Eliot, and her masterpiece is Middlemarch. Virginia Woolf called it 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'; to put it quite differently, I can assure you that there is life after Silas Marner.

My second recommendation comes with multiple caveats. The edition in question is an abridgment, and the work is one that could be assailed from either side of the 2011 'readability' debate. I find it highly readable in the best sense of the term, and an edition like this one (or the old Viking Portable, with which I'm more familiar but which this one has supplanted) is a good way for first-time readers to test that assessment. The book is Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--which I propose as a document of its own time (the 18th century) rather than of the centuries it treats. (Notes to the principal text, incidentally, are Gibbons' original ones; editor David Womersley provides a good introduction and the bridging passages.)

In each case, surf on from the initial link to find more.

30 Days Hath September

I've been away from you for longer than I like, and, with the help of some advice from my sifu (Anthony Korahais), I'm vowing to do better in this new month. In a number of our qigong classes, he's proposed that we make resolutions for the month of September, things that we vow to do every day for these 30 days. (You'll often hear that if you want to establish a new habit, it's a good idea to repeat the action in question every day for 21 days. Thirty days? All the better.)

So I'm vowing to blog every day this month--and to practice qigong every morning. The first vow is partly an experiment: to see not so much whether I can do it (after all, I have decades of journalling behind me) as what happens when I do.

It may seem like a strange way to begin, but I'd be remiss if I didn't write something about two ebooks that appeared this morning, one in the UK and the other internationally.

What I'm calling the UK ebook is the first English-language edition of Jo Nesbø's novel Headhunters. (The US edition will appear next week.) I've been singing Nesbø's praises for years, usually talking about the Harry Hole series (nine crime novels to date, of which The Snowman was most recently published in the US), which still seem to be the books for which he's most likely to be remembered. But only a handful of the Hole novels are available in the US, and the first two haven't been published in English anywhere. For readers who are ready for something very different, the standalone Headhunters may be the ideal choice. It's been called a 'caper' novel, and I always describe it as 'freewheeling'. The less one knows about the plot in advance the better--but I can say that the title refers to corporate headhunting, that surprising crimes are involved, and that this is one of those novels in which two adversaries face off repeatedly, through all the turns of a shifting game of cat and mouse. It's also an amazing book to have written--in its own very different way almost as daring as Ian McEwan's Atonement. Will you still be thinking about it a week after you finish it? Quite possibly not--for that, read the Harry Hole novels instead. (Not that you have to choose!)

It's also worth mentioning that all of Jo Nesbø's revenues from Headhunters (in Norway and internationally, from the novel and the films based on it) go to the Harry Hole Foundation, for reading and writing programs in the Third World.

More widely publicized is this morning's release, in the US and the UK, of Stephen King's eformat-only novella Mile 81. Again, it would hardly be the one work by Stephen King that I would recommend as a starting place--but with King fewer people are looking for a starting place than with Nesbø: people may not agree about Stephen King, but most people are comfortable with their own take on him, whether they love the entire corpus (and, in some cases, read little else), strongly prefer one phase or genre over another, or view him with considerable condescension. (For the record, I personally champion the King of the later short stories but find that we neglect any of him at our peril.) But if you consider yourself a King fan, you will likely enjoy Mile 81 (which plays both the automobile-horror and the childhood cards) and the appended preview of the next full-length King book, 11/22/63, which is due in November.

I'd like to note one (further?) milestone, as I see it, in the publication of Mile 81: it's an ebook-only publication but no one is harping on the fact. There's no illusion that the novella's eformattedness is news. We've come a long way since Riding the Bullet and The Plant....

Jo Nesbø, Inspector Harry Hole and the 'Oslo Trilogy'

I'm guessing that most U.S. readers either don't know Jo Nesbø, the bestselling Norwegian crime novelist, or have taken note of him only recently in their quest for something to read after they've finished Stieg Larsson. The story is somewhat different in the U.K., where the six Harry Hole novels that have been translated into English all figure prominently on the Kindle bestseller list. U.S. rights to forthcoming Hole novels recently went to Knopf, who will be giving a big launch to Nesbø's The Snowman in May, and I predict that Nesbø's U.S. visibility 'problem' will then be a thing of the past. I'll blog more about Nesbø, whom I greatly admire, between now and then; today I'll do my bit to make him slightly more visible by posting links to the Kindle editions of the three Hole novels available now in the U.S.: The Redbreast, Nemesis and The Devil's Star. They form a trilogy of sorts, and it would be a shame not to read them in order. How do they stack up against that other trilogy? I predict that all you'll miss is a female character as powerful as Lisbeth Salander. Everything else is there, and then some.