The leopard

*Starred Review* Oslo police detective Harry Hole, Nesbø's obsessive hero, jumps on and off the wagon with all the manic intensity of a kid riding a pogo stick. This time, after the horrendous events detailed in The Snowman (his lover, Rakel, and her son taken captive by a serial killer), Harry's self-flagellating leap off the wagon has carried him from Oslo to Hong Kong, where he is mixing his opium and his Scotch with reckless, delirium-inducing abandon. However, back in Oslo, Harry's father is dying, and another serial killer is on the loose. Lured by the former he professes disinterest in the latter Harry returns to Norway, takes a hiatus from booze and dope, and lands in the middle of multiple messes, not all of his own making. There's the matter of sorting out his feelings for his father and his tangled past, including the still-open sore of losing Rakel yet again; there's the question of new feelings for a fellow detective, Kaja; there's the interdepartmental power struggle in which he seems to have become a pawn; and, yes, there's the serial killer, a particularly nasty fellow who employs all manner of despicable tools to dispatch his victims. Harry can't resist the lure of an impregnable puzzle, of course, and soon his obsessive self is on the rampage. Just as we wonder if Nesbø finally has played out the theme of Harry versus his demons (inner and outer), we are sucked in again, drawn by the specter of a good man undone by a bad world and a too-sensitive soul. What Harry craves, he tells us, is an armored heart. We could use one, too, if we ever hope to turn away from the adventures of crime fiction's most tortured and compelling hero. Alas, no armor exists strong enough to keep Harry from his demons, or the rest of us from Harry. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Nesbo's books have been translated into 40 languages and sold more than eight million copies worldwide. This one stands to up the ante one more time.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

In Nesbo's outstanding follow-up to The Snowman (May 2011), Insp. Harry Hole reluctantly agrees to return home from Hong Kong, where he's been hiding out for months, after an Oslo Crime Squad colleague tells him his father is in the hospital. Considered an expert after catching the serial killer known as the Snowman, Harry is marginally intrigued by the possibility of another serial killer loose in Oslo. Back in Norway, little links two murdered women except the unusual stab wounds in their mouths. When a mid-level politician's body is discovered in a possible suicide that's soon dubbed murder, Hole realizes a single killer is at work and not yet done. Nesbo moves the action easily from Hong Kong to Norway, with side trips to the Democratic Republic of Congo, without ever losing the plot's sense of urgency. Hole, put through the emotional wringer in The Snowman, doesn't get much of a reprieve in this intense outing. By the end, he's ready to concede that what he most wants is "an armored heart." (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Any author who starts his book with a graphic, sadistic murder and expects us to follow the story down to the denouement over 500 pages later better know what he's doing. Luckily, Nesbo knows exactly what he's doing. In this gripping, intricately plotted tale, Norwegian detective Harry Hole (The Snowman; Redbird) has to battle a new enemy-the impending death of his father-as well as the usual suspects: one (or more?) pathological killers, natural dangers, tribal warriors of very different types on two continents, internecine warfare within the Oslo police department, and, most of all, himself. But like all intelligent crime fiction, this book is not only about multiple murders by heinous means. It is also about legacies, most specifically about the good and evil, love and hate, passed from one generation to the next. Verdict This vivid, violent novel promises to speak on many levels to many readers and will be snatched up by Scandinavian crime fiction fans. [150,000-copy first printing.]-David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ., Institute (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The Snowman, 2011, etc.), the poet laureate of boreal psychopathy. If there were a dictionary-definition image for numbed world-weariness, Oslo detective Harry Hole would be it, in just the way that Edvard Munch's The Scream is the canonical image of terror. (When the film is made, only the Stellan Skarsgrd of Insomnia will do.) As Nesb's newest procedural opens, Hole has taken himself into a Hong Kong exile, where he ponders the smog that builds up thicker and thicker from mainland China and fills his own modest room with the smoke from his opium water pipe. Enter Kaja Solness, Oslo gumshoe extraordinaire, who needs to find him immediately. Naturally, something very ugly has happened back home; a murder bloody enough to make a Viking of yore lose his lunch has occurred, involving a cruel instrument of torture that shoots out metal spikes: "Two needles pierced the windpipe and one the right eye, one the left. Several needles penetrated the rear part of the palate and reached the brain." Yuck. Only Hole, it seems, can divine the mind of someone sick enough to pull off such a thing, and once Hole, plagued by the memories of earlier murders and a constant craving for drink and smoke, is pulled into the case early on in the novel, it's all a go-go-go rush across the continents: Europe, of course, and Asia, but also Africa, where an ugly war is raging off in some backwater of the Congo and where, it develops, a person of interest is conducting a nasty trade. It is vintage Nesb to throw in red herrings and MacGuffins, but also to have Hole engage in a little John Woostyle dance, cop and suspect, in which the bad guy has a definite chance of taking out the good one. Nesb's formula includes plenty of participation by Kaja, a very capable woman, and plenty of current geopolitical backdrop, making Nesb a worthy mysterian-cum-social-critic in the Stieg Larsson tradition. But will good prevail? It's anything but a foregone conclusion. Good for a nightmare or three--a taut, fast-paced thriller with wrenching twists and turns.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Oslo police detective Harry Hole, Nesbø's obsessive hero, jumps on and off the wagon with all the manic intensity of a kid riding a pogo stick. This time, after the horrendous events detailed in The Snowman (his lover, Rakel, and her son taken captive by a serial killer), Harry's self-flagellating leap off the wagon has carried him from Oslo to Hong Kong, where he is mixing his opium and his Scotch with reckless, delirium-inducing abandon. However, back in Oslo, Harry's father is dying, and another serial killer is on the loose. Lured by the former—he professes disinterest in the latter—Harry returns to Norway, takes a hiatus from booze and dope, and lands in the middle of multiple messes, not all of his own making. There's the matter of sorting out his feelings for his father and his tangled past, including the still-open sore of losing Rakel yet again; there's the question of new feelings for a fellow detective, Kaja; there's the interdepartmental power struggle in which he seems to have become a pawn; and, yes, there's the serial killer, a particularly nasty fellow who employs all manner of despicable tools to dispatch his victims. Harry can't resist the lure of an impregnable puzzle, of course, and soon his obsessive self is on the rampage. Just as we wonder if Nesbø finally has played out the theme of Harry versus his demons (inner and outer), we are sucked in again, drawn by the specter of a good man undone by a bad world and a too-sensitive soul. What Harry craves, he tells us, is "an armored heart." We could use one, too, if we ever hope to turn away from the adventures of crime fiction's most tortured and compelling hero. Alas, no armor exists strong enough to keep Harry from his demons, or the rest of us from Harry. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Nesbo's books have been translated into 40 languages and sold more than eight million copies worldwide. This one stands to up the ante one more time. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

Any author who starts his book with a graphic, sadistic murder and expects us to follow the story down to the denouement over 500 pages later better know what he's doing. Luckily, Nesbø knows exactly what he's doing. In this gripping, intricately plotted tale, Norwegian detective Harry Hole (The Snowman; Redbird) has to battle a new enemy-the impending death of his father-as well as the usual suspects: one (or more?) pathological killers, natural dangers, tribal warriors of very different types on two continents, internecine warfare within the Oslo police department, and, most of all, himself. But like all intelligent crime fiction, this book is not only about multiple murders by heinous means. It is also about legacies, most specifically about the good and evil, love and hate, passed from one generation to the next. Verdict This vivid, violent novel promises to speak on many levels to many readers and will be snatched up by Scandinavian crime fiction fans. [150,000-copy first printing.]-David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ., Institute (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Any author who starts his book with a graphic, sadistic murder and expects us to follow the story down to the denouement over 500 pages later better know what he's doing. Luckily, Nesbø knows exactly what he's doing. In this gripping, intricately plotted tale, Norwegian detective Harry Hole (The Snowman; Redbird) has to battle a new enemy-the impending death of his father-as well as the usual suspects: one (or more?) pathological killers, natural dangers, tribal warriors of very different types on two continents, internecine warfare within the Oslo police department, and, most of all, himself. But like all intelligent crime fiction, this book is not only about multiple murders by heinous means. It is also about legacies, most specifically about the good and evil, love and hate, passed from one generation to the next. Verdict This vivid, violent novel promises to speak on many levels to many readers and will be snatched up by Scandinavian crime fiction fans. [150,000-copy first printing.]-David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ., Institute (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.