Nesbo’s Macbeth is a relentless mire of murder

Taking place in a fictional unnamed 'town without sun' around the year 1970, Nesbo’s setting is grimmer than a month of Sundays in the Siberian midlands

Jo Nesbo has reworked the most famous murder in English literature as a Scandinavian noir

Crime Fiction: Macbeth, By Jo Nesbo, Hogarth Shakespeare, €28

For the editors at Hogarth Shakespeare, it must have seemed a coup to convince a Norwegian thriller writer with worldwide sales of 36 million to pen a modern adaptation of The Scottish Play, a match hatched in bestseller heaven. Take one of the Bard’s bloodiest plays, where the bodycount approaches Tarantino-esque levels, add in hallucinations, hand-wringing, witchcraft, conspiracies and prophecy and it’s pretty much ...