Some feel the 2019 instalment of the Harry Hole series — Knife — is Jo Nesbø’s best.

I can’t disagree.

The worst of the worst happens.

And Svein Finne is back, perhaps Harry’s biggest nemesis.

Harry Hole started drinking again and was kicked out of his home by his wife Rakel.

… Everything changes when one morning he wakes up covered in blood without remembering what happened the previous evening and, a short time later, he discovers that a murder had taken place that night. …

This book is long and complex.

Important to the plot are favorite characters including Kaja Solness, Katrine Bratt, and Bjørn Holm.

And new likeable characters including Sung-Min Larsen, an ambitious one-time student of Harry’s who works for rival law enforcement agency Kripos, and who looks as if he has his eye on Harry’s job.

… Roar Bohr (great name), sharp-shooting ex-special forces in Afghanistan, with a rifle, post-traumatic stress disorder and a score to settle with the man who raped his little sister. …

Crime Review

Publishers Weekly criticized the novel for having an “enormous number of characters, backstories, subplots, and themes” but nonetheless praised its “well-orchestrated” ending.

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The 3rd book (2021) in the P.T. Marsh series is easily the best yet.

… a troubled small-town police detective faced with three interwoven crimes that reveal sinister secrets about his community–and the deaths of his family …

In the years since the mysterious deaths of his wife and child, P.T. Marsh, a police detective in the small Georgia town of Mason Falls, has faced demons–both professional and personal.

But when he is called to the scene of a school shooting, the professional and personal become intertwined, and he suspects that whoever is behind the crime may be connected to his own family tragedy.

As Marsh and his partner Remy investigate the shooting, they discover that it is far from straightforward, and their search for answers leads them to a conspiracy at the highest levels of local government–including within the police force. …

Fantastic Fiction

Another in the excellent genre of books by female authors with female protagonists — psychological thrillers.

All are compared with Girl on the Train. (2015)

Or the “the next Gone Girl (2012).

Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.

Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone.

As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister.

Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion. …

gillymacmillan.com

One of the hottest best sellers right now, The Covenant of Water is an ambitious, well researched novel.

Abraham Verghese is a Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford. The medical detail in this book is accurate. Part is set in a leper colony.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. …

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I was a big fan, too, of his 2009 book Cutting for Stone.

The 2022 book in the Colter Shaw series is excellent.

Twist and turns. Surprises. Typical Deaver.

Allison Parker is on the run with her teenage daughter, Hannah, are fleeing her ex-husband who’s just been unexpectedly released from prison.

Two hitmen are also hot on her heels—an eerie pair of thugs who take delight not only in murder but in the sport of devising clever ways to make bodies disappear forever. 

Colter Shaw has been hired by her eccentric boss, entrepreneur Marty Harmon, to find and protect her.

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Very Agatha Christie, I’d say the 4th book in the Hawthorne series is best, so far.

A great writer, these books are unique in that the author writes himself into the story. A bumbling Watson to Hawthorne’s Holmes.

“I’m sorry but the answer’s no.” Reluctant author, Anthony Horowitz, has had enough. He tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne that after three books he’s splitting and their deal is over. …

His new play, a thriller called Mindgame, is about to open at the Vaudeville Theater in London’s West End. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne declines a ticket to the opening night.

The play is panned by the critics. In particular, Sunday Times critic Margaret Throsby gives it a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next day, Throsby is stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which turns out to belong to Anthony, and has his fingerprints all over it.

Anthony is arrested by an old enemy . . . Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. She still carries a grudge from her failure to solve the case described in the second Hawthorne adventure, The Sentence is Death, and blames Anthony. Now she’s out for revenge.

Thrown into prison and fearing for both his personal future and his writing career, Anthony is the prime suspect in Throsby’s murder and when a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him.

But will Hawthorne take the call?

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Oddly, Harry Hole starts this book happy. He’s typically an angry drunk in these books.

Married to Rakel, love of his life. Working as a popular and sober lecturer at Police College.

A woman is found dead after a Tinder date, and marks left on her body indicate that the killer used iron teeth to kill her, and then drink her blood. Oslo’s ex-detective Harry Hole reluctantly gets involved in a search for a vampirist. …

Crime Review

Harry is blackmailed into coming back for just one more case.

I’d say this book is not bad. Not great.

Despite the impossible plot, this book does keep you guessing.

Recommended.

You’ll feel smarter for reading Nesbø. Interesting dialogue. Pop culture references to books, music, film.

The Devil’s Star (Norwegian: Marekors, literally “The Nightmare Cross”, 2003) is a crime novel by Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø, the 5th in the Harry Hole series.  …

The story moves between two parallel themes – the appearance of a new serial killer terrorizing Oslo, and Harry Hole’s ongoing feud with the corrupt and utterly ruthless fellow police officer Tom Waaler, which was already a major part of the plot of the two previous books, “The Redbreast” and “Nemesis“.

Eventually, the two issues converge – enabling Harry to resolve both in the course of a single cataclysmic night. …

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