10 Deeply Unusual And Unconventional Literary Heroes

9. Harry Hole

First Appearance: The Bat by Jo Nesbø Harry Hole is a Norwegian detective with a horrible name. He's a hard-drinking detective and you may wonder why this separates him from every other hard-edged bloke to stroll through police coridoors. Harry's drinking is almost like his superpower. It's like Popeye eating Spinach, but with Hole it's whiskey instead of spinach and he remarkably becomes a better detective. Harry is the main protagonist in ten of Jo Nesbø's novels. In the events leading up to his first outing in The Bat, Hole is a recovering alcoholic. He was in a horrible accident that killed his partner and in order to avoid the embarrassment of one of their detectives killing another one in a drunk-driving accident, the police department covered it up. From there, Harry struggles with keeping his sobriety. Then something goes wrong and he's off the wagon again. The thing is, he's really good when he's wasted, and does he ever get wasted! He remembers very little and people always recount the tales of him, usually mentioning that he was one of the drunkest people they have ever seen. The amazing thing is that he gets results. When Harry is drunk a few different things happen. Either he's brutally honest and provokes people, or he gets in drunken brawls with suspects. Since the booze kills his inhibition, he will go to any length to get the mystery solved, which makes Harry one of the most productive drunks in literature.