Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Knife by Jo Nesbø

(2019: twelfth book in the Harry Hole series. Translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith.)

From the inside flap

“Harry is in a bad place. Rakel─the only woman he’s ever loved─has kicked him out, permanently. He’s drinking again. And though he’s been given a chance for a new start with the Oslo Police, it’s in the dreaded cold case office. Wht he wants to be is investigating─what he’s made to be investigating─are new cases that he suspects have ties to Svein Finne, the most notorious criminal in Norway, the serial murder and rapist Harry helped put behind bars a decade ago. Now Finne is free. Free and, Harry is certain, unreformed, and already taking up where he left off.

“But things are about to get worse. When Harry wakes up the morning after a drunken blackout, it’s only the beginning of what will be a waking nightmare. . .”


Review

Knife is an excellent, near-impossible-to-set-down pot boiler thriller that─for the most part─masterfully builds on previous events in the series, repercussions from Harry’s and others’ pasts that now come to often-violent fruition. Main characters are knocked off or their stories warmly or horrifyingly expanded upon, big-and-bold twists and turns punctuate every other chapter, and its pace is full-speed-ahead.

The only misstep is the identity of the main killer(s) stalking Harry’s family. While it was technically well-foreshadowed, its seeds planted expertly along the way, the reason for his/her turn to the dark side felt forced, a trifle-excuse of a justification for Nesbø to further show off his clever chops. That said, it is a minor nit, albeit a near-the-end-book-take-away one, in an otherwise wow-that’s-popcorn-worthy entertaining read.

Knife is worth reading, and owning, if you can get past a killer (or killers) whose breaking points seem writerly. Followed by Killing Moon.

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