Wolf Hour

Shortly after I started to read this book there was a news alert that there had been a massacre of Jews at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Groups of people were meeting at the beach to celebrate the beginning of Hanuka, an eight day Jewish festival. Two men, a father and son, fired at the gathering on the beach from a small bridge and initially killed fifteen people with another forty admitted to hospital. Reading a novel which largely deals with the effects of uncontrolled gun crime in the USA therefore had a greater impact on me than it would have if I read it at another time.

Wolf Hour by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo and translated by Robert Ferguson is a crime novel primarily set in Minneapolis in October 2016 with some chapters set in September 2022 when a Norwegian author arrives to research the dramatic events that occurred in the city six years earlier. A man is shot by a hitman but the event receives little coverage in the news.  During the book there are a number of killings mainly revolving around past events  that occurred in the local crime world, involving gun related crime.

The story is told from different perspectives so the reader must concentrate to follow the initial chapters but it is soon easy to become immersed in the plot and the lives of some of the main characters. Homicide detective Bob Oz is a good but troubled detective with an aversion to guns. We gradually learn of his back-story as well as the back-stories of many of the characters he investigates. The second amendment features throughout the book as the targeted characters are involved in crime and gangland wars. The climax builds as a National Rifle Association conference is to be held in the city.

Jo Nesbo has written another gripping crime novel which also focuses on the stories behind the crimes being committed as well as their impact on the victims and their families. A major theme questions why the right to own a gun is such a feature of American culture.