Tag: Harry Hole

Phantom by Jo Nesbo: Harry’s Hat Trick

Phantom by Jo Nesbo is his latest Harry Hole book in the series. It is quite easily the most intricate of all the Hole novels to date. Impressive in its length and even more impressive in scope; Harry has more plates spinning than a circus clown.

Harry is back in Oslo from Hong Kong where he has sobered up, straightened out and is working as a debt collector. He is fit, tan and wearing a new suit. Despite this “moneyed” appearance however, it’s the same old Harry. Still sporting the Frankenstein scar on the side of his face from his last life or death scenario and only marginally in charge of his old inner demons.

He has come to Oslo for a very personal reason. Oleg, his ex-lover’s son, is on remand for murder. It appears that on top of growing a metre and a bit in the height department, Oleg has been sampling a new drug. Called violin it is more addictive than heroin and less likely to cause an over dose. His choice of drug and friends has put him in a bad position and Harry has come to prove Oleg innocent.

We meet a dying drug addict at the beginning of the book. He has the misfortune to be blocking a mother rat’s access to her nest and young. As this young man lies dying, he relives his short life in his mind. We learn that his name is Gusto and that he looks an awful lot like Elvis, not the spitting image, but he has the same charisma and effect on people. It leads him into the interesting life of a thief and drug addict/pusher.

It is this young man who Oleg is accused of shooting and killing. Harry goes to see his old boss and asks for his job back. Harry is told that this is an “open and shut” case. He is not to investigate it and if he wants to return to the police force in Oslo, he will have to try some place else. Harry decides to investigate anyway.

He learns of Oslo’s leading drug lord a man known as Dubai. He is also known as a phantom, because no one has ever seen him; no one that is, who lives to tell the tale. Harry promises Rakel that he will clear Oleg of the charges and find who the real killer is.

He also learns that Dubai has put all the other drugs pushers out of business with the help of the Oslo police and that the new drug violin is manmade and does not require the usual opiate base that has to be smuggled in. In fact, violin is being smuggled out of the country to the very place where the poppies grow.

He approaches the last of his dwindling number of friends for information and approaches his  old nemesis, Mikael Bellman and his thuggish toady for the same reason. He also meets an old man called Cato who, among other things, masquerades as a priest.

While following the clues that will clear up who really shot Gusto, Harry will learn of lost innocence and a young romance gone sour. He will discover that corruption in Oslo reaches very high in the police bureau and he will also learn just how far he will go to protect a loved one. He will also eventually meet his criminal doppelgänger; a doppelgänger that does not look like Harry but is his evil equivalent.

Number 8 in the series, Phantom weaves a web that ebbs and flows, constantly changing the faces and postions of the players trapped in it. As per usual, Harry is in a race against time and someone wants him stopped…dead.

I cannot praise this book enough and I have to literally hold myself back from revealing too much about the plot and the book’s players. This is easily a 5 star book that I could not put down till I finished it. Do yourself a favour and read it!

Author Jo Nesbo.
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The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo: Diamonds aren’t a Girls Best Friend

Inspector Harry Hole is back and this time he is after a serial killer who has a penchant for diamonds and a flair for theatrical murder scene staging. Harry is still trying to get enough evidence to bring his colleague Tom Waaler to justice for the murder of Harry’s old partner Ellen.

Rakel, Harry’s girlfriend is still on the periphery and Harry’s battle with booze is still just as difficult as ever.

Nesbo writes a mean crime thriller. With Harry Hole, we have a hero most flawed; not only self-destructive but harmful to those who care about him most. Harry’s biggest inner demon is not his constant craving for alcohol, but his addiction to crime itself. The allure of the murder scene with its puzzles, clues, and questions left unasked.

Tom Waaler, who has been present in the Harry Hole series for a while now, is a thoroughly unpleasant character. Overbearing and sadistic, he is also a “dirty cop” who has more secrets than he can keep control of. And that is what Waaler does best, control things. His sideline business of smuggling and knowing where all the skeletons are buried make him an appropriate challenge for Harry.

While Harry is busy confronting Waaler, they are forced to team up on a series of murders in Oslo. Each victim has been found with a star-shaped diamond piece of jewellery on their body and Harry soon breaks “the code” that the killer has left at each crime scene. The killer appears to be a bike courier who has a bad habit of cutting off pieces of the victim’s body and then leaving them as clues.

While Harry gets ever closer to finding out who the killer is, Waaler continues to entice and threaten Harry into either joining him in his extra-curricular activities or pay the consequences. Even going so far as to threaten Harry’s friends and endanger Rakel and Oleg.

While not as international as the other books in the Harry Hole series, the only external locations from Oslo are Prague and Switzerland, the action is just as fast paced and the puzzles just as good. There are the usual red herrings and misdirection for the reader and Harry to follow and discard.

My one bone of contention, if it can be called that, was that I guess very early on in the book where one of the “missing” bodies was going to be hidden and I cannot say how disappointed I was when proved right. Still, that was the only thing I guessed correctly out of the entire book.

Nesbo has brought so much life to Inspector Harry Hole and the world he inhabits that all of them seem like real living breathing people. If Harry doesn’t succumb to all the cigarettes that he chain smokes, he will continue to solve crimes for a long, if not tortured, time.

As I have mentioned before, I have been reading the books out-of-order. It would probably be a good idea for the new reader to follow the books in order. I don’t mind knowing that certain characters will not be around later or that Harry will change partners for one reason or another, but other folks might just be put off.

By all means if you want to just read one of the books, it does not matter if you’ve read any others in the series. Each book can be read as a stand-alone story. Nesbo writes each one with enough background information that no questions are raised that interferes with the plotline.

I am sure that one day soon, Nesbo will stop being touted as the “next Stieg Larsson” and get credit for the talent that he so inherently shows with each new book.

The Devil’s Star is a 4 ½ out of 5 stars only because I guessed where the body was going to turn up.

Author Jo Nesbo.
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Nemesis by Jo Nesbo: Multiple Murder…

Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis is a compulsive read. Like his other Harry Hole books it weaves a web of lies, subterfuge and murder. In this book, several murders and Harry is still after the killer who dispatched his old investigative partner Ellen.

The book starts with a bank robbery. We have a front row seat for the robbery itself and its murderous conclusion. Harry is attached to the robbery branch where he meets Beate Lonn a new officer who has a photographic memory for faces.

When the Oslo police department decide that the robbery is really a murder inquiry, Harry teams up with Beate to track the “bank robber” down.

In the meantime Harry’s love interest is in Moscow with her son Oleg fighting for custody with Oleg’s birth father. An old flame of Harry’s has apparently committed suicide and he realises that she was murdered.

Harry links up with Norway’s most prolific bank robber, a gypsy named Raskol, who is in fact the uncle of his old love. While the two men spar for information to both Anna’s (Harry’s past lover and Raskol’s neice) murder and the identity of the bank robber who killed a teller, the body count rises in this neatly constructed story.

Added to this already volatile mix is a colleague of Harry’s who is conspiring to have him framed for the murder of his old lover.

Nemesis is a typical Inspector Harry Hole novel. He is still a victim of his excesses, struggling with his alcoholism and his migraine headaches. He still operates “outside-the-box” while chasing suspects and in this book he has been given free rein to act as he sees fit.

As with all of Nesbo’s books, he paints a vivid picture of his characters and we are privy to their foibles and inner demons. His cast is multi-national as usual and we travel with Harry and Beate to another exotic “hot spot” where they are chasing one of the suspects.

Nesbo’s Norway is dark and occupied by a fatal combination of repressed people and their complete opposite, Dionysian villains. But this dark world is not divided equally into a black and white world. The lines between the two types of people converge and blur, so that a lot of grey areas dominate the scenes.

I have mentioned in the past that I am quickly becoming a huge fan of Herr Nesbo’s books. Hopefully publishers will tire of calling him the “next” or “new” Stieg Larrsson – a descriptive title given to any halfway decent writer of Scandinavian origin. I enjoy his books so much that I am in the slow and irritating process of reading all his English translated books.

Slow, because due to financial constraints I have to reserve books at the local library for perusal and irritating because I want to read them all, in order and now.

This is another brilliantly paced and delightfully confusing trail for all armchair detectives to follow. Of course we do not have the burning need to catch the bad guys like Harry Hole does, but, we love the journey of discovery after discovery as each onion-like layer is stripped away. Despite the fact that I am not reading the books in order – something that tinges each story with a sort of sadness for the later Harry – each story stands on its own and doesn’t have to be read in any particular order.

My final verdict is that you should add this to your list of must-reads. A cracking 5 star gem of a book. Thanks Jo Nesbo for entertaining us so thoroughly.

Jo Nesbo
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Headhunters by Jo Nesbo: A Killer Interview…

As you can see from the front of the book Headhunters will soon be a “MAJOR MOTION PICTURE” although technically it already is. Released in 2011 from Norway the film opened to positive reviews from both sides of the Atlantic. I am surprised that a Hollywood motion picture studio has not already given Headhunters the “Hollywood remake treatment.” Hollywood was certainly quick enough to re-make The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Headhunters is a relatively short book, almost a novella, at only 265 pages. But in this “short” novel Jo Nesbo manages to pack one hell of a great sucker punch for the reader lucky enough to have stumbled upon his book.

I became a Nesbo fan after coming across a blurb talking about his latest Harry Hole thriller. The name was enough to make me curious and I read the Hole book (sorry about the pun) and fell in love with not only his protagonist, but the writer as well. Although Headhunters does not feature Harry nor is it part of the series, Nesbo displays the same crisp narrative as he does for his serial killer hunter.

Headhunters starts with introducing us to Roger Brown, he’s an exclusive (top of the heap, he says) recruiting specialist aka a headhunter. He’s the best at what he does and is well compensated for his efforts. He uses a 7 point FBI interrogation model as his interview template and he is ruthless in his search for the right candidate.

Brown also suffers from what a friend of mine amusingly refers to as “short man’s attitude.” In other words his lack of height makes him a bit egotistical and aggressive. He also highly values his own capabilities as a recruiter, husband, and thief.

It turns out that Roger has a pretty opulent lifestyle, one which he supplants with art theft from his potential candidates. Using the interview as a distraction and a means to discover what valuable art the interviewees own, he then steals them with the aid of his criminal partner.

One candidate, Clas Greve (a high flyer in the world of GPS manufacture and an ex-mercenary) has a priceless painting by Paul Rueben and here is where the story takes off. It changes from the Napoleon-esque ramblings of egocentric Roger Brown and becomes a fight for survival.

The opening salvo from Nesbo is a scene where Roger is in a crashed car surrounded by dead bodies and Roger is extolling his thoughts on car crashes and the resultant mayhem caused by them. He finishes his thoughts with the explanation that he is a murderer and that his time is short. He then goes on to relay his story to us via the first person narrative which works very well for the book.

Nesbo is brilliant at setting up stories that move quickly and efficiently throughout. His pacing is electric and his characters stand out. He is also not averse to pulling the metaphorical wool over the eyes of his readers. Roger goes through a character arc that explains a lot about who he is and how he became the man he is now and will soon be.

Clas is a truly scary man who, as an ex-mercenary, is more than capable of tracking down and killing his prey. Both Clas and Roger are predators of a dissimilar nature, but as the story evolves they merge to become the same type of killing machine.

My only disappointment with the book was that at 265 pages it was too short a read. Still entertaining and so fast paced it left me breathless, but, damn it could have been a little longer.

I will now have to watch the Norwegian film that was based on the book. Although, according to Wikipedia at any rate, the film does deviate somewhat from the novel. If ever a book had been written that screamed to be made into a film, Headhunters is that book.

I would definitely give the book a full five out of five stars. Full of fascinating characters and, once the books shifts into fifth gear midway, grips you fiercely until the end. Headhunters is just another winning “Scandi-crime” thriller from author Jo Nesbo.

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The Leopard by Jo Nesbo: Has Harry Gone Down the Hole?

In what is apparently the eighth instalment of the Harry Hole series, Harry is in Hong Kong. He’s smoking opium and owes the Triad a great deal of money. Kaja Solness has travelled to Hong Kong on a mission to find Harry and bring him back to Oslo. They have a serial killer; a brutal, savage and bloody serial killer and they need Harry’s help to stop him. But is Harry Hole in any shape to return? More importantly, does he want to return?

When we left Harry at the end of The Snowman, he was an emotional wreck. The toll of catching the Snowman was a harsh and personal one. Harry has gone underground in Hong Kong to stop thinking about everything.

Jo Nesbo has done his research well on the hunting of serial killers. He has obviously studied the current and past experts who worked with the FBI to catch, among others, The Green River Killer and Ted Bundy.

The toll in real life is horrible. FBI Profiler John Douglas, who helped police catch Gary Ridgeway (the green river killer) and Wayne Williams (Augusta Georgia child murders) and more, had a real life breakdown from the stresses of having the ability to “put himself” in the minds of his suspects. He has written about his experiences. His first book, Mindhunter (1995) and his second, Into the Darkness (1997) explained how he worked and the toll it took on him. Although he didn’t realise how much of a toll until the stress affected his health.

Douglas has been portrayed in fiction several times because of his high profile. I don’t think that Nesbo’s Harry Hole is necessarily Douglas in Norwegian clothing. But he has done his research well enough to build Harry as a real person who suffers horribly for his innate talent. He also suffers from guilt; guilt over his family and for the fellow police officers who have died while working with him.

In The Leopard, two women have been murdered. They have nothing in common apart from their gender and the fact that both died from drowning on their own blood.

Harry’s old boss Gunnar Hagen is desperate for Harry to solve the murders. The reason for this desperation becomes clear when Harry meets Mikael Bellman the head of Kripos, a new crime division that Bellman wants to make into Norway’s Scotland Yard. Bellman’s “empire building” is brutal and single minded. Hagen wants to solve the case so the Ministry of Justice doesn’t make Bellman the “Napoleon” of Kripos.

As more bodies turn up and more victims are brutally murdered, it becomes a race against time, Bellman and his Kripos team and the mole that Harry appears to have on his team. And of course the killer.

Meanwhile, time is running out for Harry’s father Olav who is dying in the hospital from cancer. Harry is also still fighting all his old demons as an alcoholic and he is now smoking illegally smuggled opium as well.

As the battle for catching the murderer changes sides and targets, Harry turns to Katrine Bratt (whom he worked with in The Snowman and [SPOILER] who also had a nervous breakdown near the end of that book) to help him on the case by using the old military search engines to find information about suspects and victims on the internet.

In this book everything appears to be at stake, Harry’s father’s life, Harry’s sanity and his love/hate affair with the Crime Office which is in danger of being made redundant by Bellman and his pet project of Kripos.

The Leopard has a very international feel to it. Hong Kong, the Congo and Australia all figure into the plot. As Harry, Bellman and Harry’s team continue to peel away layers that will reveal who the killer is, Harry’s boss Hagen is searching for ammunition to use against Mikael Bellman to keep him from taking over his job.

Jo Nesbo has outshone himself in this book. Death, drugs, alcohol, stress, doubt and guilt all play a huge part in this novel. The final race to catch the killer will have you on the edge of your seat with tension.

One hell of a great read!

Jo Nesbo, Norwegian Maestro.

 

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