Didn't really work for me
3 stars
Jo Nesbo's retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I think I have only previously read Tracy Chevalier's New Boy, an Othello retelling, which I enjoyed so I was keen to try Macbeth. I hadn't been particularly enamoured of my first Jo Nesbo crime novel, Nemesis, but in the same way as I prefered Henning Mankell's historical fiction to his Wallander books, I hoped giving Nesbo another try with a different type of novel might endear me more to his writing. Unfortunately this didn't happen. I did quite like Nesbo's portrayal of the bankrupt, drug-addled and corrupt town, but felt this was let down by flat characterisation and lazy stereotyping such as Chinese women having 'inscrutable' eyes. If I hadn't already had a good knowledge of the characters I think I would have struggled to remember who was who in the supporting cast, and there's a …
Jo Nesbo's retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I think I have only previously read Tracy Chevalier's New Boy, an Othello retelling, which I enjoyed so I was keen to try Macbeth. I hadn't been particularly enamoured of my first Jo Nesbo crime novel, Nemesis, but in the same way as I prefered Henning Mankell's historical fiction to his Wallander books, I hoped giving Nesbo another try with a different type of novel might endear me more to his writing. Unfortunately this didn't happen. I did quite like Nesbo's portrayal of the bankrupt, drug-addled and corrupt town, but felt this was let down by flat characterisation and lazy stereotyping such as Chinese women having 'inscrutable' eyes. If I hadn't already had a good knowledge of the characters I think I would have struggled to remember who was who in the supporting cast, and there's a missed opportunity with the trans character, Strega.
Nesbo transposes the narrative from kings to a police headquarters while keeping the main plot points so this Macbeth is very much a crime novel. There is political manoeuvring as well as frequent violent murders, a drug lord and a biker gang. For me the biggest problem was that I was never convinced of Macbeth's motivation. A couple of sentences spoken by way of an apparent prophecy and he's suddenly behaving as a very different person from the one that we are repeatedly told he is. It's all rather strange and with an even less credible ending than Shakespeare's. This Macbeth hasn't put me off trying more of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, but I can't see myself reading Nesbo again.