The Bat (Harry Hole, #1)

by Jo Nesbø

“The bat is the Aboriginal symbol of death. Did you know that?”

Or an inadequately developed soul, a typically Norwegian concept? Harry wondered. Did courts anywhere else in the world judge the quality of a soul?

“In traditional crime fiction every detective with any self-respect has an unfailing nose for when people are lying. It’s bullshit! Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child’s deepest secrets.”

“Love is a greater mystery than death. And you have to watch out for snakes.”

Here I am sitting in a bar, Harry thought, listening to a transvestite lecturing on Australian politics. He felt at home, a bit like Harrison Ford in the bar scene in Star Wars.

“Intuition is just the sum of all your experience. The way I see it, everything you’ve experienced, everything you know, you think you know and didn’t know you knew is there in your subconscious lying dormant, as it were. As a rule you don’t notice the sleeping creature, it’s just there, snoring and absorbing new things, right. But now and then it blinks, stretches and tells you, hey, I’ve seen this picture before. And tells you where in the picture things belong.”

Doren had asked his uncle why he’d told her. The affair had taken place many years before, after all, and he hadn’t had any contact with the woman subsequently. The uncle had answered that being unfaithful hadn’t been the worst part. It was the getting away with it that he couldn’t hack.

“People are afraid of what they don’t understand. And hate what they’re afraid of.”

“Everything you do leaves traces, doesn’t it. The life you’ve lived is written all over you, for those who can read.”

You almost get the feeling he knew the police car was there to keep an eye on the door. And, if so, how is that possible?” Silence. “How’s Kensington doing in hospital, by the way?”

Once something has been experienced, it’s too late, you can’t get back the feeling of experiencing the same thing for the first time. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is.”

The human soul was a deep, dark forest and all decisions are made alone.