Nemesis by Jo Nesbø

Harry rubbed the palm of his hand over his unshaven chin, reflecting on what Aune had said about drugs simply emphasising latent tendencies. He didn't know if he found that reassuring. Isolated details were beginning to emerge. A black dress. Anna had been wearing a black dress. And he was lying on the stairs. A woman helped him up. With half a face. Like one of Anna's portraits.

'I always have blackouts,' Harry said. 'This is no worse than any of the others.'

'And your eye?'

'Probably bumped into a kitchen cupboard when I came home or some such thing.'

'I don't want to worry you, Harry, but it looks like something more serious than a kitchen cupboard.'

'Well,' Harry said, taking the cup of coffee with both hands. 'Do I look bothered?'

-Nemesis

Inspector Harry Hole has had a lousy night, as you might have guessed from the passage above. The semi-recovering alcoholic made the questionable choice of having dinner with a former flame and woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and no memory of the previous evening. The day is not off to a promising start, and things get worse when a call comes in: a woman found dead in her flat, an apparent suicide. Harry isn't so sure. The woman is Anna, his date from the night before.

In Nemesis, poor Harry already had his hands pretty full before this most recent development. His girlfriend's in Moscow, locked in a bitter custody dispute with her ex-husband. He's working a tough case, that of a robber, nicknamed The Expeditor, who killed a bank teller in the course of a heist. And he's still doggedly pursuing any wisp of a lead he uncovers in the case of a fellow officer's murder. On top of all of this, he gets an e-mail.

Shall we play? Let's imagine you've been to dinner with a woman and the next day she's found dead. What do you do?

What does Harry do? He doesn't tell his girlfriend, for one. Nor does he inform the police of his ties to Anna. Instead he puts his head down and gets to work, using every connection he has in order to try to tease out answers in his cases, both of which are becoming increasingly complicated. His investigation takes him everywhere from gypsy caravans in Oslo to the criminal underground in Brazil. Did I mention it gets complicated?

Jo Nesbø excels in telling smart, twisty tales, and Nemesis is just as satisfying as The Redbreast, its predecessor in the Harry Hole series. Harry's a very compelling character and, in addition to his new travails, Nesbø has also set up an intriguing ongoing case with the investigation of the murdered officer. I hesitate to say too much about that aspect of the book, since it was a pivotal plot point in The Redbreast, and I think surprise is an important element in this series. As readers, we know more than Harry about the officer's death and the related corruption in the police department; I cannot wait to see what happens when he puts it all together. He'll either wreak vengeance or utterly collapse - and possibly both. You can see why it's going to be difficult to resist the siren call of The Devil's Star, the third book in the series, currently only available in hardcover (it was released in March). Let's hope that the library hold list is moving at a brisk pace, shall we?

Up next: Thanks to my pal Robin, I do have the next two books in another enjoyable (although entirely different) series, Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books. I'm already digging in to All Together Dead.