The Snowman by Jo Nesbø

The snow in the yard reflected enough light for him to make out the snowman down below. It looked alone. Someone should have given it a cap and scarf. And maybe a broomstick to hold. At that moment the moon slid from behind a cloud. The black row of teeth came into view. And the eyes. Jonas automatically sucked in his breath and recoiled two steps. The pebble-eyes were gleaming. And they were not staring into the house. They were looking up. Up here. Jonas drew the curtains and crept back into bed.

-The Snowman 

I was so excited to read the next Harry Hole novel--until I realized it wasn't the next Harry Hole novel. I was still happy to read The Snowman, to be sure, but it did take a little bit of the shine off when I realized that somehow The Redeemer had been lost in the shuffle. I'm still not sure why The Redeemer is so unavailable, but I'll get a hold of it somehow--when I'm in London this summer, if nothing else, though it might be hard to wait until then!

Leaving the mysterious publication order aside, The Snowman was another satisfying outing from Jo Nesbø. This time around, Harry's extensive knowledge of serial killers is put to good use when he finds himself on the trail of a criminal who kills women--all mothers--who have cheated on their husbands. The killer is as cold as his icy moniker would suggest, and the crimes are bloodier and more disturbing than I recall from previous Harry Hole stories. Unsurprisingly, the denouement is mind-boggling. I find it quite curious that this is the first Harry Hole story slated to be adapted for film--by Martin Scorsese, no less-- as I simply cannot imagine actually seeing the end of the story on screen. That's not to say it wasn't gripping--it absolutely was--but it also got pretty ludicrous.

Obviously, I'm on board for more Harry Hole books. I was quite keen to keep reading at the end of The Snowman, particularly seeing how badly Harry had been shaken by this case. I'll have to be in suspense a bit longer, though, I suppose, since I do want to read The Redeemer before moving on.

Up next: I was hungry for more mystery, so I went with Laura Lippman's The Most Dangerous Thing.

The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbø

She half turned without seeing him and wrinkled her nose as if there was a potent smell coming from somewhere, which was a possibility Harry could not completely exclude. She asked the checkout girl for a pack of 20 Prince Mild cigarettes.

'Thought you were trying to give them up.'

Vibeke turned round in surprise, scrutinised him and gave him three different smiles. The first one, fleeting, automatic. Then one of recognition. Then, after she had paid, one of curiosity.

'And you're going to have a party, I see.'

She put her purchases into a plastic bag.

'Something like that,' Harry mumbled, reciprocating her smile.

-The Devil's Star

Harry Hole is in a bad way. As we saw in The Redbreast and Nemesis, Harry's struggle with his demons is unending. By the beginning of The Devil's Star, Harry has given up the fight.

We don't know why at first, but the result couldn't be clearer: we meet Harry in the midst of an epic bender. His supervisor kindly put him on leave four weeks earlier, when Harry just stopped showing up for work. But a police officer can't be on leave indefinitely, and he's finally called in to a crime scene. A woman has been murdered; her index finger ritualistically severed. Harry's partnered up with Tom Waaler, whom he loathes. It comes as no surprise that things get off to a rocky start.

'One of the officers at the crime scene threatened to write a report on you. He says you were visibly intoxicated when you arrived [...] Were you intoxicated, Harry?'

'Of course I wasn't, boss.'

'Are you absolutely positive you're telling me the truth right now, Harry?'

'Are you absolutely positive that you want to know?'

Harry heard Møller's groan at the other end.

Soon enough, a woman has disappeared, and it isn't long before the two cases are connected. As usual, Nesbø has engineered a remarkably clever mystery that requires a serious amount of effort to untangle. The Devil's Star is complex without becoming overly convoluted; Nesbø seems to have become somewhat more judicious with his twists. (I did have a bit of trouble picturing some of the logistics of the gruesome climax. Perhaps that was just a self-preservation instinct.) Overall, I consider it the strongest of Nesbø's novels to date.

Aside from his crackerjack plots, Nesbø's greatest strength as an author is the shape he gives to the damaged, driven Harry*. There is no romanticizing of Harry's problems here—Nesbø never shies away from showing exactly how low Harry can fall. I was wincing at points, because at his core Harry is wonderful—smart, resourceful, caring, funny—and as a reader I can't help but hope for better for him. Harry's behavior, in this book more than any other, has realistic and potentially far-reaching consequences. I am very interested to see where things lie at the start of the next book, The Redeemer. I'm not sure when it will be out in the US, but I see that it's already available in paperback from amazon.co.uk. Oh, so tempting....

Up next: I'm picking up The Botany of Desire again. Good so far, but I can't exactly call it a page-turner.

*And all of his characters, really. I'm consistently impressed to how much depth he gives to characters who might only be around for a few pages.

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.

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

Harry had driven right up to her house before he realised where he was. He stopped the car and stared between the trees. It was fifty or so metres to the house from the main road. There was light in windows on the ground floor.

'Idiot,' he said aloud and started at the sound of his own voice. He was about to drive off when he saw the front door open and light fall on the steps. The thought that she might see and recognise his car put him in a state of panic. He slotted the car into reverse so that he could back quietly and discreetly up the hill and out of sight, but he didn't have his foot hard enough on the accelerator and the engine died. He heard voices. A tall man in a long, dark coat had come out on to the steps. He was talking, but the person he was talking to was hidden by the door. Then he leaned in toward the door opening and Harry could no longer see them.

They're kissing, he thought. I've driven up to Holmenkollen to spy on a woman I've talked to for fifteen minutes kissing her boyfriend.

Then the door closed, and the man got into an Audi and drove past him down to the main road.

On his way home Harry wondered how he should punish himself. It had to be something severe, something that would have a deterrent effect for the future. An aerobics class at Focus.

-The Redbreast

Harry Hole is a great policeman, but when he's assigned to work security during a peace summit in Oslo, he makes a huge, potentially career-ending mistake. He goes on a bender, as is his wont. When he sobers up, he discovers he's been promoted. Bureaucracy.

His new position mostly involves him sitting in a lonely office at the end of the hall, pushing papers - it's a good place for his superiors to keep an eye on him, but it's soul-sapping work for him. And yet, even when he's only left with paperwork, Harry can't help but be a good detective. It isn't long before something catches his eye - a report of someone discovering spent ammunition from a Märklin rifle. It's an unusual weapon - "the ultimate professional murder weapon," in Harry's words. Naturally, he can't help but wonder what someone is planning to do with it.

Someone is planning Very Bad Things. The Redbreast tells both a story in the present, of Harry's pursuit of the Märklin riflesman, and one in the past - in 1944, to be specific, when some Norwegians, then under German occupation, chose to fight for Germany on the Eastern Front. It's a piece of history I was wholly unfamiliar with, and Nesbø does an excellent job weaving together history and fiction, past and present, including a link between the Norwegian defectors and the modern resurgence of neo-Nazism. The plot, as you might imagine, gets a bit complex - and I might even say there's one twist too many toward the end - but it's certainly clever and hugely absorbing. I was reluctant to put it down.

Harry Hole is a wonderful protagonist, another take on the damaged detective. He has little resembling a personal life (and you can see the trouble he gets into when he tries in that excerpt above) and only a tenuous grasp on sobriety. In the middle of the book, he leaves someone a series of absolutely gutting answerphone* messages while he (quite understandly, as it happens) is totally blitzed. But, unlike many of those fictional alcoholic renegade cops out there, Harry goes to the gym. He listens to Joy Division. (If I hadn't been sold on Harry already, that would have done it. I always find it mysterious that so many fictional detectives listen to classical and opera**.) Harry is his own man: a true Gen-Xer, he wears Doc Martens to court. Love.

Honestly, if I could have the next book in the series, Nemesis, in my hands now, it would be there. Alas, I could only find it in hardcover at the bookstore, and I had to be realistic about how I should spend my money. If I see it in paperback before I come home, though...

Up next: the 6th Sookie Stackhouse - the ultimate vacation reading!

*Yes, that was a bit over-the-top British, but gutting is without a doubt the best word for them. And answerphone, besides being the term used in the book, sounds so much better than the unwieldy answering machine, don't you think?

** Wallander, John Rebus, and Inspector Morse, I believe, just off the top of my head.