The New York Times Book Review - James Shapiro
One of the pleasures of reading this book is watching Nesbo meet the formidable challenge of assimilating elements of the play unsuited to realistic crime fiction, especially the supernatural…In Macbeth, Shakespeare was unusually stingy when it came to sharing his characters' back stories and motivations…What Shakespeare withholds, Nesbo delves into deeply, taking one of Shakespeare's shortest and most enigmatic plays and expanding on what brought his characters to this point in their lives…Nesbo also makes much of one advantage he has over Shakespeare, who during the reign of the Scottish King James, recently targeted for assassination, could not show a Scottish monarch being killed onstage…Nesbo works under no such constraints, and these violent scenes are among the most memorable in the novel. The result is inventive and deeply satisfying, especially to readers already familiar with the plot.
Publishers Weekly
01/29/2018
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. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Macbeth:
“Inventive and deeply satisfying...[Nesbo] offers a dark but ultimately hopeful Macbeth, one suited to our troubled times.”
—James Shapiro, New York Times Book Review (cover)
“Nesbo manages the balancing act of being true to the original play without slighting his own interests as a writer: bleak settings, loyalty (or the lack thereof) among crooks, clever escapes from tight spots, the affinities between policemen and the criminals they chase.”
—The Washington Post
"Nesbø has adhered to his contract, delivering a book that plays off of Shakespeare's work but succeeds as his own."
—NPR.org
“The legions of readers who adore the dark Scandinavian noir of Jo Nesbø will also love Macbeth, his adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous play.”
—USA Today
“Macbeth is a modern-day drug-war, power-struggle, double-cross, lawmen-versus-gangsters recast of Shakespeare’s Scottish play.”
—Associated Press
“Nesbø 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.”
—Booklist (starred)
Praise for Jo Nesbø:
"Jo Nesbø is my new favorite thriller writer."
—Michael Connelly
"Nesbø's much-heralded gifts are on displayusing his talent for conjuring the chilly Munch-like atmospherics of Oslo in the winter and his eye for grisly, alarming details that slam home the horror of the evil that men do."
—New York Times Book Review
"The world is dark and frozen, according to Nordic noir, and so is the human heart. But it's the magic Nesbø works with the genre's tropes that matters. . . . [He] might be my favorite of the lot."
—Chicago Tribune
“Nesbø writes like an angel. As in Lucifer.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Nesbø explores the darkest criminal minds with grim delight and puts his killers where you least expect to find them. . . . His novels are maddeningly addictive.”
—Vanity Fair
“In the crowded field of Scandinavian crime fiction, Nesbø’s books stand out. . . . Nesbø likes to rip plots up . . . to play with the conventions of his genre.”
—The New Yorker
“[Nesbø is] the writer most likely to take the ice-cold crown in the critically acclaimed—and now bestselling—category of Nordic noir.”
—Los Angeles Times
“I am the world’s greatest living crime writer. [Jo Nesbø] is a man who is snapping at my heels like a rabid pitbull poised to take over my mantle when I dramatically pre-decease him.”
—James Ellroy
“The next Munch or Ibsen could be Jo Nesbø”
—CNN
APRIL 2018 - AudioFile
It’s disappointing to report that this entry in this intriguing series of Shakespeare plots rewritten by modern masters just doesn’t work, at least in this audio version. Narrator Euan Morton’s use of an aggressively glottal Scottish accent for the entire text, not just dialogue, distracts from the narrative badly. Worse, Nesbo’s strength is noir thriller plotting, and this plot is not his. He’s made Macbeth, Banquo, and the rest into police detectives jockeying for career advancement while at war with a drug lord called Hecate. The weird sisters are junkie hookers, okay fine, but can you call Macbeth’s girlfriend “Lady” without laughing? Nesbo’s tale is a murder story, but Shakespeare’s is a tragedy of a human condition, and Morton certainly doesn’t help Nesbo approach that. B.G. 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
APRIL 2018 - AudioFile
It’s disappointing to report that this entry in this intriguing series of Shakespeare plots rewritten by modern masters just doesn’t work, at least in this audio version. Narrator Euan Morton’s use of an aggressively glottal Scottish accent for the entire text, not just dialogue, distracts from the narrative badly. Worse, Nesbo’s strength is noir thriller plotting, and this plot is not his. He’s made Macbeth, Banquo, and the rest into police detectives jockeying for career advancement while at war with a drug lord called Hecate. The weird sisters are junkie hookers, okay fine, but can you call Macbeth’s girlfriend “Lady” without laughing? Nesbo’s tale is a murder story, but Shakespeare’s is a tragedy of a human condition, and Morton certainly doesn’t help Nesbo approach that. B.G. 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-01-23
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. Nesbø'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 Nesbø'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.