Macbeth

January 29, 2018
In this ambitious entry in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, bestseller Nesbø (The Thirst and 10 other Harry Hole novels) transmutes Macbeth into a crime novel set in 1970s Scotland. Macbeth heads the SWAT team in a dreary city called Capitol, determined to take down criminal gangs and to clean up the corrupt local government, a goal shared by Duncan, Capitol’s upstanding police chief. But local drug kingpin Hecate wants to be rid of Duncan and schemes to put Macbeth, something of an outsider and an addict to a drug called “brew,” in charge. Hecate sends Macbeth three sisters (the witches in Shakespeare’s original), who foretell his future: that he will be head of the Organised Crime Unit and then chief commissioner. Macbeth is promoted to the first post by Duncan, and “Lady,” Macbeth’s consort and a local casino magnate, has the manipulative wiles to ensure Macbeth does whatever it takes to eliminate Duncan and rule the city. The themes will resonate well with contemporary readers, but, at nearly 500 pages, the story feels bloated. It’s a clever reengineering of one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, but may disappoint Nesbø’s fan base.

February 1, 2018
The reigning king of Scandinavian noir (The Thirst, 2017, etc.) updates the Scottish play.Most of the cast members retain their own names, or something very like them. The setting--an indeterminate town during the drug wars of the 1970s--is, like the settings of earlier entries in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, both the same and different. Nesbo's Inspector Macbeth is the respected leader of the SWAT team whose efficiency and honesty mark him as a natural leader when he takes charge of the otherwise spectacularly botched stakeout of a drug transfer to the heavily armed members of Norse Riders. Swiftly leapfrogging his old friend Inspector Duff to become head of Organized Crime, he's pressed by his wife, Lady, to get ahead even further and faster by killing Chief Police Commissioner Duncan while he sleeps in the Inverness Casino, which Lady owns. As in Shakespeare, Duncan's murder unleashes the powers of hell, which here take the form of massive and spreading corruption--everyone on every conceivable side of the law seems to be double-crossing someone else--more fully fleshed-out accounts of Lady's background, Duff's escape, Macbeth's tangled alliances, and a body count even higher than the Bard's. Reimagining Shakespeare's royal tragedy as just another chapter in the essentially unending struggle of working towns against the familiar tokens of criminal blight, though it produces a less offbeat update than the film Scotland, PA, is eminently in the tradition of the gangster remake Joe Macbeth, and Nesbo's antihero has a chance to get off some trenchant one-liners about himself, his legion of enemies, and his town, which "likes dead criminals better than duplicitous policemen." On the whole, though, this brutal account is no tragedy.The main takeaway is how remarkably contemporary the most traditional of Shakespeare's great tragedies remains, whether it's updated or not.

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Starred review from April 1, 2018
In some of his most revered tragedies, Shakespeare wrote crime fiction. Hamlet, on one level, is a detective story starring a quintessentially flawed sleuth, and Macbeth?except for the ending, which, by Elizabethan convention, restores a measure of order to society?is the darkest of noirs. Nesb�, one of our contemporary noir masters, offers only the illusion of restored order in this latest entry in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, which reinterprets the Bard's works across multiple genres. Hewing closely to the story, Nesb� fashions Macbeth as the head of a SWAT unit in a rain-darkened, drug-infested Scottish city. His success in battling a notorious biker gang lifts Macbeth near the top of the police force's upper echelon, but standing in the way of still more power is the corruption-fighting chief commissioner, Duncan. Leave it to Macbeth's lover?known here only as Lady?who owns a casino called Inverness, to conceive a plan in which Macbeth kills Duncan and takes his place. Helped along by their addiction to a superdrug called Brew, Lady and Macbeth do the deed and then gradually unravel in a guilt-fueled fever dream that prompts still more violence. Nesb� infuses the mythic elements of the tragedy with bold strokes of horrific, Don Winslow-like drug-war realism. The result displays in a strikingly original way both the timelessness of Shakespeare's art and the suppleness of noir to range well beyond the strictures of formula.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2018

In the latest retelling in the Hogarth "Shakespeare" series, internationally best-selling Nesb sets his version of Shakespeare's Scottish play in the 1970s in a former industrial town where the factories have long been shut down and crime and drugs are now the main industry. The new police commissioner, Duncan, has vowed to clean up the town, including taking on drug lord Hecate, who manufactures the highly addictive Brew. Both the head of the Narco Unit, Duff, and the head of SWAT, Macbeth, have been tipped off about the arrival of a large drug shipment for Sweno, Hecate's competitor, and are staking out the location. This scene launches the political and bloody battles that take place over the next 500 pages. Macbeth and Duff jockey for power, with Macbeth supported by fellow police officer Banquo and casino owner and lover Lady. As Macbeth and Lady use Brew, provided by Hecate, their paranoia and ambition increases, along with the body count. Now it's up to Duff and Malcolm to stop them. VERDICT Nesb's usual skill at writing gripping crime novels with compelling protagonists is not on display here. His Shakespeare retelling has a forced story line and characters who are not nearly as memorable as in the original. [See Prepub Alert, 10/9/17.]--Melissa DeWild, Spring Lake Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2017

Up next in the Hogarth Shakespeare series: international crime fiction phenomenon NesbO reenvisioning the icy-dark Macbeth. In a rundown industrial town in the 1970s, drug dealer Hekate, her product overseen by a crew of weird sisters, tells Inspector Macbeth that one day he'll replace upright chief of police Duncan. Macbeth's lover, a casino owner named Lady, knows exactly what must happen to Duncan and his loyal assistant chief, Malcolm, to make that prediction come true.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.