Every now and then the stars align to allow popularity and excellence to combine orbits. So it is with the current wave of Scandinavian crime fiction.

Like many, I first encountered SCF via Peter Hoeg’s 1996 novel, Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow. Since then I have followed the exploits of numerous damaged and/or laconic Nordic detectives as they pursue depraved killers and encounter political and moral corruption against a backdrop of geographical and existential bleakness. Luckily the odd shag gets thrown in for good measure.

Despite stiff competition, The Don of SCF is clearly Henning Mankell and his Karl Wallender series. Now however, only two books in, we must consider Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series to be its equal.

With a new Nesbo, Nemesis, out this month I feel the need to clear the decks in readiness. Last year I began the Hole series with the terrific Red Breast, in which the alcoholic Oslo detective uncovers neo-Nazi shenanigans and the tendrils of a decades-long mystery, whilst simultaneously alienating himself from the entire police force and scraping the bottom of the emotional barrel. Luckily the odd shag gets thrown in for good measure.

Next up is the still more cheery The Devil’s Star. But there is a problem. The Red Breast and The Devil’s Star are respectively Number Three and Number Five in the Harry Hole series. Numbers One and Two are as yet untranslated so given the ring-rustiness of my Norwegian, I was out of sync before I started. More annoyingly it turns out the “new” one, Nemesis, is actually Number Four. Grrr – why do publishers do that? I’m sure there must be a logical reason because clever people don’t do stupid things on purpose do they?

Still, despite being forced to follow Harry Hole in a publisher-dictated shonky order, The Devil’s Star is great – an exemplary reminder why I like crime fiction in the first place. It’s true there is plenty here familiar even to casual students of the genre, from Harry’s alcoholism and world-weary but incorruptible integrity, through to the chilling deviousness of the murderer and the pervasiveness of corruption in authority. No matter, like genres the world over, when placed in the hands of a master they are made to appear fresh and alive once more. Jo Nesbo is turning out to be just such a master.

The Devil’s Star works as a plot-driven page-turner of the first water but it is also a novel inhabited by major characters you care about and minor characters that are both memorable and believable. It has a genuinely mysterious mystery, an unusual and unsettling location and a novel-straddling uber storyline the final outcome of which I simply need to know. I’m fairly sure good will out in some way, but given Harry’s capacity for self-destructiveness, I suspect the saga may end in tears.

Whatever, as long as it takes a few more books as good as The Devil’s Star to find out I will be a happy kanin. Let’s just hope they arrive in the correct order from now on in.

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