Going the Hole hog

Jo Nesbo is a whole lot more than Harry Hole's creator - in fact, just reading his resume would make Harry fall off the wagon again in two seconds flat.

Pre-Harry Hole, Jo Nesbo was on track to become a professional soccer player, until a serious injury put the kibosh on that career. He spent three years in the Norwegian military, veered off into university studies, followed by nine years as a stockbroker, while blasting out a parallel life as a vital member of Norway's hottest rock band. No wonder he felt burned out before reached 40.

Nesbo is soaking up familiar landscapes in Queenstown when we catch up. He's at the tail-end of a recent visit to New Zealand to launch Phantom - episode seven - in the Harry Hole story, and his first movie based on 2008's art-theft thriller, Headhunters.

Like Harry, Nesbo seems a pretty laid-back character, although it's hard to imagine Harry dabbling in a spot of rock-climbing, which is what Jo has planned to do after our interview.

Growing up in Norway, books were a way of life for Nesbo's family: his mother a librarian, his father a book collector. Not hard to understand then that Nesbo's love of books started early and no doubt planted the seeds for what was to follow post burn-out.

Harry Hole was actually born in our part of the world, on a flight from Sydney back to Norway after Nesbo had taken time out to travel when he'd ditched the stockbroking-cum-rock-star segment of his life.

Though our first experience with the enigmatic Harry Hole is with The Redbreast, Nesbo actually introduced Harry in The Bat Man which went on to win Norway's Glass Key Award as the Best Nordic Crime novel in 1997. The Bat Man will hit our bookshelves later this year.

Oslo is not only Harry Hole's patch it's also where Nesbo has spent most of his life, and where he lives with his family today. Nesbo has seen it transform from what he describes as a village-town to a cosmopolitan European city, but also from an innocent naive Scandinavian township to a place riddled with crime, including last year's massacre by Anders Brevik, and with a burgeoning drug culture, which Nesbo reflects in his latest Hole novel, Phantom.

Between 1997 and 2012, the seven internationally released Harry Hole novels have catapulted Nesbo's success in his native Norway on to the world-stage, with more than 11 million copies sold in 40 countries. He's hit the New York Times top-10 best-seller lists and was the third biggest fiction author in Britain last year on the back of half a million copies sold of The Leopard.

Although Headhunters, which doesn't feature Harry Hole, is his first novel to make the big screen, Hole fans can look out for a movie of The Snowman, with Martin Scorcese directing.

Nesbo being Nesbo, he hasn't rested on his laurels and simply churned out a string of Harry Hole thrillers over the last decade.

As well as the Headhunters stand-alone thriller, he's also on to his fourth children's book, again character-driven, with a red-headed 10-year-old boy, Nilly, which was inspired by spontaneous storytelling to his young daughter. Given the title, Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder, Nesbo was understandably nervous when it was published in 2007.

He needn't have worried. Nilly and his BFF, Lisa, have created another successful series.

So, what's next for Nesbo and his Harry Hole fans? The Bat Man's release later this year will follow on from his latest best-seller, Phantom, even though they book-end Harry Hole's career.

While that will no doubt keep Harry Hole fans satisfied in the meantime, I was keen to find out about a follow-up to the Phantom, given it's ambiguous ending. Although Nesbo wouldn't give a clue in that direction, I reckon we can watch this space with optimism.