The Bat

Harry Hole, an inspector with the Oslo police, is sent to Sydney to help with a murder inquiry. The victim is Inger Holter, a young Norwegian woman who once hosted a children's television programme and was working in a bar when she died.

Harry is teamed with Andrew Kensington, an Aboriginal Australian detective. His orders are to observe and stay out of the lead, and he does not follow them.

He pursues his own lines of inquiry, drinks heavily and becomes involved with a key witness. As he does, the case grows past a single killing into the search for a serial attacker.

Harry clashes with suspects and with figures from Sydney's underworld. His own habits are the other danger, and they may wreck him before the case is solved.

This is the first book in the Harry Hole series, a crime novel set between Oslo and Sydney. It first appeared in Norwegian in 1997 as Flaggermusmannen, won the Riverton Prize and the Glass Key, and reached English in 2013 in Don Bartlett's translation.