Police

August 26, 2013
The life of Insp. Harry Hole, who was shot in the head by his surrogate son in the finale of 2012’s Phantom, hangs in the balance for much of Nesbø’s powerful 10th novel featuring the Oslo homicide cop. Secondary players who have helped out along the way step into the spotlight: forensics expert and facial-recognition whiz Beate Lønn; the brilliant but psychologically unstable detective Katrine Bratt; Harry’s longtime friend Bjørn Holm; and the slippery new police chief, Mikael Bellman. The police force itself is at stake when it becomes apparent that the seemingly unrelated deaths of police officers are actually part of a larger pattern: each officer was slain at the site of an unsolved crime. In Nesbø’s able hands, Harry’s absence is a character unto itself, but this will only make readers more eager to learn Harry’s fate. Author tour. 150,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

Starred review from September 1, 2013
Having upped the ante with the previous novel in the Harry Hole series, the author goes for broke here. Arguably the most densely packed and ambitiously plotted novel in a series that has been getting darker with each volume, the tenth novel featuring Harry Hole is a companion sequel to its predecessor (Phantom, 2012). That book had left the former Oslo detective no longer a member of the police force and perhaps no longer alive. The publication of a new Hole novel removes the "spoiler alert," though for the first third of the novel, Harry exists more as a memory or an inspiration than as a character. The audacity of the author's vision here is that Hole is but one of a number of characters who might be living, might be dead, might even be some sort of ghostly spirits. There's a religious dimension to the plot twists of death and rebirth, of man playing god, both the redeemer and the avenger. The basic plot, not that there's anything basic about it, is that a series of gruesome crimes have remained unsolved for years, though DNA testing offers new possibilities. The police who investigated the original crimes and failed to solve them are lured back to the murder scenes, on the anniversaries of the murders, and are then themselves killed in an equally gruesome manner. Is the killer the same as the first, covering his tracks? Or is he "an apostle of righteousness," an agent of justice, insisting that those who failed to solve the crimes must pay for them? Is it even possible that the one stalking police is himself a member of the force, revolted at the corruption that those who read the previous novel know now extends to the top? Or is he part of that corruption? Casualties spawn new theories, as those thought dead turn out to be alive (and vice versa), and the complexities suggest that "the human brain is a four-dimensional labyrinth. Everyone's been there; no one knows the way." A surprise ending promises a fresh start for a series that had appeared to end with its previous novel.

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September 15, 2013

The Oslo Crime Squad hunts for the serial killer responsible for the torture and murder of police officers staged at the scenes of earlier unsolved crimes. Nesbo's (The Redeemer; The Phantom) newest mystery presents an entire school of red herrings as readers try to discern who is the villain, who is the next victim, and what happened to Harry Hole. A stalker/student with a peripheral connection to an earlier case diverts attention from the investigation while obstruction by the politically connected chief of police and his vicious henchman hinders the detectives in their desperate chase to stop the murderer(s) before another colleague is harmed. VERDICT Followers of the Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-la) series will want to read this book for both the resolution to the end of a previous novel, The Phantom, and the development of an old antagonist. Though Nesbo's police procedurals have become increasingly violent and heavy on coincidences, crime fiction readers will enjoy the high level of suspense that is sustained throughout as more questions are raised than answered before the startling conclusion is reached.--Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2013
Three shots fired at point-blank range. Harry Hole has to be dead, doesn't he? And, yet, here is a new Harry Hole novel, not an earlier installment of the series published out of order. Ever since word of this novel's publication started leaking, fans of Nesb's best-selling series have been scratching puzzled heads: Harry alive? Well, you're not going to find the answer in this review, and in fact, you won't find it definitively until page 505 of Nesb's maddening yet riveting cat-and-mouse game of a novel. But let's leave poor Harry in a kind of literary limbo for the moment and focus on whatwith or without Harryis one hell of a thriller. Police officers in Oslo are being murdered by a serial killer with a bizarre agenda: each victim is discovered at a crime scene that mimics the scene of an earlier unsolved murder. Not only that but the new victims all participated in the investigations of the earlier crimes. Is the killer a fellow cop? Working as an off-the-books task force, Harry's former colleaguesBeate Lnn, Stale Aune, Bjorn Hlm, and Katrine Brattset out to find the answers. It's clear that Chief of Police Mikael Bellman and his henchman, Truls Berntsen, are dirty, but are they killers? Nesb cunningly plays with the reader throughout this devilishly plotted tale, introducing multiple corkscrewing twists and, while we're worrying about Harry, slipping in a horrifying shocker from another direction altogether. The narrative is ingenious, but it grips us the way it does because, after nine novels, we've formed abiding relationships with these characters and don't like to see them messed with. Nesb messes with everyone here, especially the reader, but furious as we'd like to be, in the end we're willing supplicants.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

January 6, 2014
For roughly a third of Nesbø’s new novel, Oslo police detective Harry Hole is missing—not surprising considering he was felled by a headshot at the end of 2012’s Phantom. In his stead, associates struggle to work around venal police chief Mikael Bellman while hunting for a vicious serial killer who’s slaughtering police officers. Narrator John Lee provides the book’s characters with pitch-perfect voices. He catches forensic expert Beate Lonn’s arch smugness and sense of superiority, and Bellman’s self-satisfied purr, rich in vanity when he is in control, obsequious in the presence of power. When Harry eventually appears, more or less recovered, he’s a different man: sober, contemplative, and retired from police work. Those changes are present in Lee’s vocal interpretation, and, as Harry is eventually drawn deep into the killer’s grim game, anxiety, ire, and even a touch of fear are added. Lee is able to adapt his voice to any situation. It hardens during the book’s descriptions of particularly grotesque and disturbing murder scenes, softens for romantic moments involving Harry and his true love, Rakel. Perhaps more important, his precise diction, pacing, and emphases do wonders in presenting this particularly complex crime novel that consists of at least four separate plots that unfold simultaneously, all complete with clues, twists, turns, red herrings, and plenty of misdirection. A Knopf hardcover.