How did Harry Hole come to be?
He was a sort of a mix between some Norwegian characters and a bit of the American hard-boiled detective. I thought I had to decide whether I should avoid the typical police detective clichés or embrace them. I chose the latter because I really like those clichés.
He is like some other detectives, an alcoholic, a loner and that must have some appeal for readers because some of the best known contemporary detectives like John Rebus or Kurt Wallander share some of Harry’s traits.
They do. I think writers are looking for conflict, all stories are about conflict and so you want to have conflicts on different levels. And you want your main character to have inner struggles. And the crime itself, because it’s day-to-day work, it may not be the most important conflict in their life. So you want them to have a sort of moral conflict
I try to give him all sorts of moral dilemmas. His self-hatred also has to do with his alcoholism, he’s not a happy drinker like the American hard-boiled detective cliché, a guy who wakes up in the morning and he’s hung over and he’s making cool remarks about it. Here you have a guy who can’t stop drinking and stops functioning when he’s drinking. It’s his Achilles Heel. It’s his Kryptonite.
Why do you think readers are drawn to these sorts of stories. They’re psychological stories, but there are so many ways to tell them … why are we drawn to see the world through crime?
I think there are many reasons. One reason why people like crime is that it’s an established way of telling stories. What you’re looking for in a story you don’t want the unexpected, you want what you’re expecting but you don’t know that’s what you’re expecting. It’s like timing in humour. A famous Norwegian comedian told me that what makes you laugh is not the unexpected, it’s the expected, but you give the punchline one second before you arrive at the punchline yourself. That’s why the classic crime novel in some ways is like the comfort of your own apartment. Here in Toronto, you have rush hour, heavy traffic and you have a perfectly good public transportation system. So why do people ride in their own cars? Why don’t they take the bus? It has to do with the comfort of their own cars, you can do anything, and with the crime novel, you have all kinds of great novels. Why do intelligent well-educated people turn to the crime novel? I think it has to do with the comfort of their own vehicle, they know what they’ll get, in a way. Though that sounds a bit depressing, it’s why they like crime novels.
It also sounds like you’re saying that they’re lesser books … and they’re not, though they have been perceived that way.
Yeah, but writing a good crime novel is like the 100-metre dash of literature. It’s quite easy, it’s just the first man across the line wins. But that also makes the competition so fierce, so it’s hard to succeed in that genre because so many people are doing it.
Why are Scandinavians so fond of crime? There are so many Scandinavian crime writers.
