Nemesis: A Harry Hole Novel (Harry Hole Series, 4)

There have been seven Harry Hole novels, but this is only the second to be published in the United States (the first was "The Redbreast"). Both demonstrate the author's uncanny ability to continually lead the reader astray with one false conclusion after another before disclosing, in a final twist, a most unexpected dénouement. In the present novel, these principles apply to two separate story lines. One involves a bank robbery in which a woman is shot in the head. The other finds a woman with whom Harry had a short affair shot in her bed the day after Harry had dinner at her home (but he can't remember a thing about the evening). In fact, there are clues implicating him in the deed and in fact, the cover asks the question: "How do you catch a killer when you're the number one suspect?" The translation by Don Bartlett from the Norwegian flows smoothly. The novel was a number one best-seller in Norway, spending 39 weeks on the best seller list. Past novels from this author saw Bangkok and Australia as settings. Nesbo is now writing the next Harry Hole novel which will take him to Hong Kong, so Harry certainly gets around. It should be well worth waiting for, if the past is prologue. Highly recommended.

Jo Nesbo's "Nemesis" is a fascinating 475-page book. And it's a challenge to read. But it's entirely engrossing. I read it in about 3 days. The main character, Harry Hole, a mid-30s detective on the Oslo, Norway Police Department, is a complex, frustrating man, neither quite likable nor unlikable. He's a cop with a brain and conscience. He is rash, but compulsively planful, complex, often a clumsy romantic and decidedly uncomfortable in his own skin. He is careless, frequently getting himself into self-imposed difficulties. He often thinks himself into a jam. He breaks rules and puts himself and others in great danger. He pressures people to do favors for him. He's wise and idiotic. He has bad habits: he drinks, swears, smokes, doesn't get nearly enough sleep and throws up. Hole gets himself beaten up or drugged, often runs scared (barefoot even), and relies on childhood friends to get him out of trouble. He's not a whole lot of fun to be around -- ever. He rarely says more than 10 words at a time, but when the verbal dam breaks, he speaks for 2 pages (something that happened about 4 times in the book). His past is full of pain. He is an occasional womanizer, bemoans his "loner-life" but is an excellent sleuth. He believes he has found happiness with his current flame, Rakel and extended family. He is not a person you would enjoy having as an office mate. However, he is someone you would want to cover your back. It would not interest me to have dinner with him, and I would probably not invite him to a party at my home. Nesbo "writes" women very well. The 4 key women players in "Nemesis" are very, very interesting, immensely different one from the other, and in some ways single-handedly carry the story forward. I would love to have dinner with any of the women (Anna, Rakel, Vigdis, and Beate) at any time. In fact, no one in the tale is cookie cutter, except perhaps Hole's own personal nemesis on the force, the egotistical and evil Tom Waaler, apparently a David Hasselback look-alike, who strangely enough, comes across as Nesbo's most superficial character in this and "Redbreast." I truly hope that in the next novel, Nesbo puts him where he belongs: in jail. I'm tired of reading about Waaler. Neither Hole nor Nesbo "needs" Waaler. The challenging part of the book is keeping track of the 4 main story lines, a) the bank robbery/murder; b) the suicide/murder; c) threads of the unsolved and unresolved murders in "Redbreast" which continue to haunt Hole and the reader in "Nemesis;" and d) Harry's own very long (and slightly boring) list of personal issues and troubles. Intermixed with all these story lines are episodes and events that take place not only in Oslo and environs, but also in Moscow and Brazil. In other words, the plot and its execution are exceptionally complex and demanding. 5 or 6 people meet a horrible, grisly, and ghastly death. Grit your teeth, because you have a front row seat to it all. Actually, I'm not really a fan of mo

Beware of this Viking! Nesbo plays mindgames with his poor delighted readers. Many of the short chapters are a new challenge to find your bearings. This can be tedious, in case that you just look for a page turner. This is not a simple page turner, but one of the more intelligent cop stories that I have read for a while. The ingredients are not all that original. You have the troubled cop with the difficult private life and the alcohol problem (who happens to be called Harry on top of all the other similarities to Bosch), you have the inside trouble in the police force, the overlapping of new cases with the past.. But then it is not Los Angeles, but Oslo, which makes for a wonderful change of scenery. Very exotic. Want an example for what I call mindgames in my opening above? The story opens with Harry observing a bank robbery. Of course we figure out after a while that his observing is done on the video screen with the help of security camera coverage. We read what he sees, not his interpretation of it. This leads to us mistaking a routine money delivery visit for filling the ATM, by the armoured pickup truck, for the actual robbery, which we know is going to happen. More mindgames are played by the hero's nemesis via e-mails, also not exactly a new idea, but very effective. As I said, this Viking is out to trap you in your own expectations. It is fun. Harry doesn't dislike his colleagues on principle, he dislikes them by instinct. It is a completely normal paranoia. While he thinks they are all after him, in reality probably a maximum of half of them is. As far as music goes, this Harry is as reliable as his Californian namesake, and comparable to his Scottish colleague Rebus. When the radio plays Another Day in Paradise, he turns it off. And another added value: Dilbert's principles are in full swing in the Norwegian police force. As they are probably in every larger organisation in the Western world. (I would so love to see a Chinese Dilbert; not just a translated one, but a genuine local equivalent.) On the down-side, if there must be one, (must there?), I would admit that one might find holes in the plot if one wished to poke too hard. But then, I don't really give that much for the plot when I like the writing, the mood, the speed, the humor. The author knew that there are holes, why else would he call the hero Harry Hole?

If you're a fan of complex police drama, intelligenty written and cleverly crafted, then the talented Norwegian author Jo Nesbo's crime fiction should find a place on your bookshelf. "Nemesis" is the third English translation of Nesbo's tales of Oslo police inspector Harry Hole, chronologically fitting in between the two previous US releases, "The Redbreast" and "The Devil's Star" - both excellent and well worth finding and reading. "Nemesis" starts with Hole painstakingly reviewing the surveillance video of an Oslo bank robbery that escalates to murder at the hand of the coldly proficient perp, an obvious professional who leaves nothing to chance, his face concealed with a baklava, his voice unprintable, no fingerprints, no fibers, few clues of any kind to crack the case. But from Jo Nesbo's pen, a mere bank robbery, even if seemingly unsolvable, is pedestrian. So to compensate, the author spins multiple and apparently disconnected story lines into hapless Harry's investigation and life, resulting in a near epic tale of crime that, while a bit confusing at times, is exactly the kind of convoluted crime mystery that will keep you glued to the pages, scratching your head, and by the end marveling through an expected series of whiplashing twists and Holmes-like deductive reasoning. So back to those parallel threads. With Harry's beloved Rackel and son Olav off to Moscow to settle an ugly child custody case, Harry reluctantly succumbs to an almost-innocent dinner invitation of Anna, an ex-lover. The next morning, Harry awakes in what is apparently an alcohol-induced blackout with no memory of events of the previous twelve hours. This becomes a rather inconvenient issue when Anna is found dead in her apartment the next morning. While chasing down leads to the bank heist with criminologist Beate Lonn, Harry surreptitiously probes the death of Anna which, while ruled a suicide by the Oslo PD, Harry finds nagging incongruities, keeping them to himself but wanting the truth. While the introverted Beate Lonn pulls critical bank job clues from grainy video, Harry's solo investigative efforts into Anna's death wind their way into the mysterious and potentially deadly gypsy culture, including the most intriguing relationship between cop and incarcerated villain since "Silence of the Lamb's" Clarice Starling sparred with the brilliantly demented Hannibal Lecter. Nesbo rises above the pack in crime writing with convincing characters and unusual themes, set against an appropriately gritty, dark, and dank Scandinavian backdrop. Hole is the interesting but not uncommon pulp cop - an alcoholic, a loaner an unrepentant maverick, the bane and joy of his beleaguered boss's professional life. But the real magic here is Nesbo's painstaking attention to detail and plot development, a master of foreshadow and deception, hiding critical clues for the reader in the most unlikely places, while building momentum for a climax as cerebral as it was suspenseful. One fin

If you're a fan of complex police drama, intelligenty written and cleverly crafted, then the talented Norwegian author Jo Nesbo's crime fiction should find a place on your bookshelf. "Nemesis" is the third English translation of Nesbo's tales of Oslo police inspector Harry Hole, chronologically fitting in between the two previous US releases, "The Redbreast" and "The Devil's Star" - both excellent and well worth finding and reading. "Nemesis" starts with Hole painstakingly reviewing the surveillance video of an Oslo bank robbery that escalates to murder at the hand of the coldly proficient perp, an obvious professional who leaves nothing to chance, his face concealed with a baklava, his voice unprintable, no fingerprints, no fibers, few clues of any kind to crack the case. But from Jo Nesbo's pen, a mere bank robbery, even if seemingly unsolvable, is pedestrian. So to compensate, the author spins multiple and apparently disconnected story lines into hapless Harry's investigation and life, resulting in a near epic tale of crime that, while a bit confusing at times, is exactly the kind of convoluted crime mystery that will keep you glued to the pages, scratching your head, and by the end marveling through an expected series of whiplashing twists and Holmes-like deductive reasoning. So back to those parallel threads. With Harry's beloved Rackel and son Olav off to Moscow to settle an ugly child custody case, Harry reluctantly succumbs to an almost-innocent dinner invitation of Anna, an ex-lover. The next morning, Harry awakes in what is apparently an alcohol-induced blackout with no memory of events of the previous twelve hours. This becomes a rather inconvenient issue when Anna is found dead in her apartment the next morning. While chasing down leads to the bank heist with criminologist Beate Lonn, Harry surreptitiously probes the death of Anna which, while ruled a suicide by the Oslo PD, Harry finds nagging incongruities, keeping them to himself but wanting the truth. While the introverted Beate Lonn pulls critical bank job clues from grainy video, Harry's solo investigative efforts into Anna's death wind their way into the mysterious and potentially deadly gypsy culture, including the most intriguing relationship between cop and incarcerated villain since "Silence of the Lamb's" Clarice Starling sparred with the brilliantly demented Hannibal Lecter. Nesbo rises above the pack in crime writing with convincing characters and unusual themes, set against an appropriately gritty, dark, and dank Scandinavian backdrop. Hole is the interesting but not uncommon pulp cop - an alcoholic, a loaner an unrepentant maverick, the bane and joy of his beleaguered boss's professional life. But the real magic here is Nesbo's painstaking attention to detail and plot development, a master of foreshadow and deception, hiding critical clues for the reader in the most unlikely places, while building momentum for a climax as cerebral as it was suspens