Oh how disappointed I was with this book. I love Jo Nesbo and couldn’t wait to read it but found the author had taken a short elequent play and dragged it out into a tedious long story. I hate to criticise and do think if you don’t know the story of Macbeth then it would be a good read for you I just felt the comparison was inevitable and the result very much in favour of Shakespeare. It will not stop me reading more Nesbo though providing he goes back to what he does so well.

Macbeth by Jo Nesbo is the third book I have read in the Hogarth Shakespeare initiative published by Vintage. As with all the other retellings I think Macbeth will not only add to the original version but will also make it more appealing to new audiences.

When I read Shakespeare’s Macbeth previously I always used to get confused between it and Hamlet and I haven’t read any Jo Nesbo previously, so I was unsure how I would feel about this book, but I enjoyed it.

In the beginning, the corrupt police commissioner named Kenneth has just died leaving behind a city that is best described as “a quagmire of corruption, bankruptcies, crime and chaos.”

The new commissioner Duncan is determined to fight corruption in the city and has replaced all of Kenneth’s cronies with people he knows or believes to be trustworthy. The public appear to trust him also and feel like he will make the city a better place.

Duff wants to be one of Duncan’s new guard in line to replace some of Kenneth’s former colleagues, more specifically he wants the job of head of organised crime. Unfortunately, an error of judgement means that Macbeth gets the job instead much to Duff’s chagrin.

Macbeth was happy simply being head of SWAT but his ‘wife’ Lady has enough ambition for the both of them and convinces him that head of organised crime is not enough. She convinces him he needs to kill Duncan and take over his job.

This was an idea supported and planted by one of the main crime bosses Hecate who knows of Macbeth’s history as a drug addict and is convinced that he can get him under his control.

As the story escalates Macbeth and Lady are plunged to new depths and it is anyone’s guess how things will end and who will still be standing.

This was a brilliant retelling and it retained the central themes of madness and betrayal. I definitely recommend it.

In a town rife with corruption, it’s hard to know who is good and who is bad. Or, at least that is the case in Jo Nesbo’s Macbeth, which seems to sit permanently in the grey.

The city, somewhere in Scotland in the 1970’s is grey, overhung by smoke and smog. The settings seem to be mainly grey, with a lot of the action taking place at night or in the evening. And the characters are grey, so many walking a fine line between what is right and wrong, it’s no wonder some of them start to fall.

In a way, it’s perfect Nesbo territory and why I love his books – there is a darkness there that draws you in and, even with characters that tend to chose the moral right versus the legal one, I can’t help but want them to succeed.

In other ways, though, this book is very different from his others. It’s not set in Oslo for a start, which has it’s own type of grittiness but Scotland. As much as I tried, I couldn’t quite get the scene in my head. I felt that I was in a 1984-type future almost, not a real 1970’s city (the rundown nature of which I can just imagine). Everything felt too stylised for me. I didn’t like that, if I’m honest, because I couldn’t settle into the ‘place’ of the book.

It was probably intentionally, because this is also not Nesbo’s normal type of book in that’s it a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, brought up to date and told through modern eyes. My problem was, it didn’t work for me. There was none of the Nesbo I loved in these pages. The writing was hard to follow, overly descriptive in parts, and jumping in style so I kept feeling wrong-footed.

I have asked myself if I would have felt the same if I was new to Nesbo’s work and the answer is probably no. I think I would have enjoyed it more so there is something about expectations here. If I could just have let myself let those go and enjoyed it for what it was – a dark, gritty, piece of crime writing, I would have been better off. I don’t think I’d have loved it but I would have enjoyed it more.

I think I also had expectations because this is now the third book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series I have read and the other two books (Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood and New Boy by Tracy Chevalier ), I have really enjoyed. With those, I found you didn’t need to know the story well, you could just read the story and get lost in it. Here, I kept flashing back to my limited knowledge of Macbeth, trying to fit the pieces together. I’m not sure why that it, but it happened.

All in all, then, it didn’t make for the best read for me. I wouldn’t let it put you off trying it though (there is a free sample on Amazon UK for those interested in trying before buying), especially if you aren’t as familiar as I am with Jo Nesbo’s other books.

DNF at Duncan's demise - the sheer length of this pummelled me into submission. I'd initially thought 'I don't need to read this, I can see exactly where it's going', but had soon changed it to 'I want to read this, I can see exactly where it's going'. But the morose mood, of the entire city hit by drugs, criminality and corruption, and of course the rain, meant the whole thing was always going to be far too long for my tastes. I think Nesbo bludgeons the reader with negativity about his setting too much (it won't win any favours or awards from Scottish Tourism, for sure) but he is handicapped by the pretence he has also slathered on to each page - that this is something distinctive, and new, and unknown, and that the average reader will stick to it and pretend he has no foreknowledge of the plot. Well, this average reader does have a handle on the original, and to him the idea that you'd be satisfied with such a wordy variant, however distinctive, was a flaw too many. It should have been a mash-up of half the length, allowing you to enjoy the twists put on each key scene, and no more - certainly not the rich but plodding endurance test it actually is.

The Hogarth Shakespeare series has been a fairly up and down ride. Some of the modern novelisations of Shakespeare's plays have worked better than others, as might be predicted. With Macbeth, Jo Nesbo goes for a direct approach. From the title (unlike the others in the series, this new version isn't renamed) to the plot, this is recognisably Macbeth. The title character is updated to an ex-drug addict cop in a town beset by two major gangs, corruption, and drugs, in a relationship with Lady, the proprietress of one of the town's two casinos. As expected, it doesn't take long after a bloody drug bust for Macbeth to see a chance to rise rapidly up the ranks. Whatever it takes.

Macbeth as a gritty crime thriller perhaps isn't all that surprising. One notable element is the lack of the supernatural: in Shakespeare's play, the otherworldliness is one of the most memorable elements, from the weird sisters to visions that could be madness or magic. In Nesbo's version, Hecate is a crime boss and visions come from drugs and trauma. Macbeth isn't so much caught up in fate as caught up in the world of gangs and police corruption, where promises are made and broken and allegiances quickly cast off. Some will be disappointed in this grittier focus, but it foregrounds the fact that it only takes a few suggestions of potential power to push Macbeth forward, even without the showmanship of the supernatural.

The large cast of characters are woven together as questions of who is a traitor to who run throughout the novel. This element feels very Shakespearean; it is, like with many of Shakespeare's plays (and indeed as with many crime novels), easy to forget who is who to begin with. Macbeth has an extended past with Duff, giving the novel a central relationship that is far more powerful than Macbeth's with Lady (Macbeth), who in this version seems downplayed.

Nesbo has created a solid rewrite of Macbeth, placing the titular figure's ambitious and bloody story amidst a grim drug-stricken landscape. Perhaps impressively, one of Shakespeare's shorter plays becomes a long novel. Sometimes it drags, but a lot of the time the length is to follow conventions of the crime genre: following numerous characters through set ups, personal problems, and remembrances of their tormented pasts. Using a specific genre gives this addition to the Hogarth Shakespeare series a sense of purpose, a reason for existing that highlights how the original play is similar and different to a crime story.

I am still new to Jo Nesbo’s novels, I just read a couple of them, but I love his writing and his well-developed characters. Macbeth is one of my favorite Shakespeare’s plays so I have been looking forward to read this and I’d like to thank Vintage Books for providing me with a proof copy of this modern retelling of the 400-year-old play.

The novel is set sometimes in the 1970s, in a town without a name, a town nobody leaves, a corrupted town where crime is high. The previous Chief Commissioner was a man in the hands of drug lords who let the town fall into chaos, but now Duncan is the new Chief Commissioner. He is a visionary, an idealistic who promises to end the war on drug by capturing the most powerful criminal in town, Hecate. At his side there are the loyal Malcolm, Duff, Inspector of the Narco Unit who dreams of becoming the Head of the Organised Crime Unit, and Macbeth, head of the SWAT team.

Macbeth comes from the poorest side of town, he grew up in an orphanage, and he is an ex drug-addict. Despite this, Duncan decides to promote him as Head of the Organised Crime Unit. And when Strega, a witch sent by Hecate, prophesizes him that he will become Chief Commissioner, Macbeth and Lady (who is the owner of the Inverness Casino) come up with a plan to get rid of Duncan and help Macbeth’s raise to the top.

I really couldn’t put this book down!!! I stayed up late at night reading and I am still thinking about it, days after I finished it. All the characters from the Shakespeare’s play are in the book, sometimes with different names (Macduff becomes Duff) and Jo Nesbo did a fantastic job in creating complex and vivid characters. They are all corrupted, but I couldn’t help liking them at some point or other throughout the novel. Duff is driven by his ambition to become powerful and Lady (who had a very troubled childhood) sees power as a tool for survival. Macbeth is the best-crafted character. Jo Nesbo follows the original storyline of the play, but until the end I couldn’t help but hope for redemption and salvation for Macbeth. It’s fascinating to watch Macbeth become a ruthless and reckless man who doesn’t stop at anything to get what he wants. But he has also a more human side, a side that doesn’t let innocent people die, a side that it’s not corrupted by drug or by his love for Lady.

Out today, MACBETH is such a superb and riveting novel. Jo Nesbo’s writing is captivating, as usual, and the setting of the novel is very dark and grim, the perfect frame to this world of drug and corruption.

I normally enjoy Jo Nesbo’s writing and I am sure many people would love this take on Macbeth. It has been very deftly transformed into police inter department politics and the drug business. It just wasn’t for me.

I was a bit slow when I started this book. Even tho’ the main character is called Macbeth and his girlfriend is Lady, along with friends and colleagues called Duff, Duncan and Banquo etc, I still didn’t click it was a retelling of Shakespeare’s MacBeth. It wasn’t until Duncan’s death and the manner in which he was killed that I realised what I was reading. If only Shakespeare had been this enjoyable and easy to read at school.
Jo Nesbo’s Macbeth is set in the 1970s and centres around a police force battling a town with a drug problem. There are two rival gangs at odds here and one of them is controlling Macbeth. Just like the original novel, this one is full of murder, betrayal and madness. #netgalley #macbeth

The last in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, and I might suggest the best. Jo Nesbo, creator of Harry Hole moves Macbeth forward to 1970's Inverness, with Macbeth himself heading up a SWAT responsible to Duncan the head of the police. With a corrupt local government in the pocket of drug lord Hectate, Duncan promotes Macbeth to the head of the Organised Crime Unit (a prediction from the three sisters), however Lady (Macbeth's love) wants more and Macbeth is ready to follow her advice.

This retelling of Macbeth starts out a little sluggishly, I think it's to do with scene setting, however once the initial raid occurs and the characters are up and running, this novel turns into a 'heck' of a crime noir. This brutal, bloody novel captures the essence of shakespeare's Macbeth and will tick all of the boxes for Harry Hole fans.

Wow, what an amazing book. Jo Nesbo is certainly a gifted storyteller. You can never tell where the story is going to take you, and that’s one of the exciting things about reading his books. ‘Macbeth’ is no exception, with quite a few surprises along the way. However, it’s not just the plot that I found entertaining, it was a great group of characters that made this book a fabulous read.
Inspector Macbeth lives in a town ruled by drugs and corruption, and the police have a constant battle on their hands. Not so for the police with their hands in the cookie jar, that are fully prepared to side with the criminal element, and there seems to be quite a few of them. Macbeth and his friend Inspector Duff really wanted to clean up the town and make it a safer place for everyone to live in. With the corrupt police commissioner gone, they may have a chance with Duncan being the new replacement. Easer said than done though, with two major drug players that had far too much control to be taken down anytime soon. A motorcycle gang called the Noose Riders were extremely dangerous, and they controlled part of the incoming drugs, along with ‘Hecate’ who controlled the rest. With Macbeth in charge of Swat, there doesn’t seem like much he can do, however with a girlfriend like ‘Lady’ he may just have a chance at making a difference. It just depends on how far he’s prepared to go. I’m so glad that I chose to read one of Jo Nesbo’s book back in 2012, and since then I’ve had so many hours of entertainment and enjoyment from each one of his books. ‘Macbeth’ is well worth a read. I loved it.

The combination of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Nesbo' s dark brand of crime writing should have been a match to die for - but somehow this novel just doesn't work for me. The most successful of the Hogarth series (and imitative adaptations and appropriations more generally) take the Shakespeare text as their starting point but invest the appropriating text with a life of its own: that's what made Atwood' s [book:Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold|29245653] and Jacobson' s [book:Shylock Is My Name|25614272] both so wonderful - they do innovative and creative things with the originary text, they don't simply retell the story in another form, time and place. The intertextual points of contact are surprising and meaningful - and the interrelationships add weight and insight to both Shakespeare and the modern retelling.

Nesbo, on the other hand, seems overly wedded to Shakespeare's Macbeth, simply displacing the plot and characters into a 1970s grim Scottish town where the height of ambition is to be Police Commissioner. There are no surprises here, and the original play feels shoehorned awkwardly into this revised setting. Hecate is now a master-criminal, Lady a casino owner, and Birnam Wood becomes a ... steam engine named Bertha Birnam! This sense of bathos permeates the book: everything feels too simple and superficial ('He had to become the other Macbeth, the one he had buried so deep, the crazy flesh-eating corpse') with too much being 'told' to us: 'he was courageous and a ruthless man of action, but he had failings that could prove costly. A lack of evil.' The occasional quotation, usually paraphrased, from Shakespeare simply isn't enough to give this much-needed depth.

Macbeth is a relatively short play; this is over 500 pages and feels it - what was taut and thrilling becomes drawn-out and plodding: did we really need the back story of how Macbeth and Lady first met, for example? More importantly, the characters here are unconvincing in psychological terms: I just didn't believe that this Macbeth could be so easily bullied into a murder he does not want to commit, for example.

So not one of the more successful Hogarth Shakespeares for me - but plenty of other reviewers have loved it.