The Redeemer by Jo Nesbø

The Redeemer
by Jo Nesbø

The libraries’ Just Desserts mystery fiction discussion group finally got around to reading and discussing a Jo Nesbø novel for our April 2016 meeting. We ended up using this, the sixth volume in Nesbø’s Harry Hole series, featuring a brilliant Oslo murder investigator who’s also a struggling alcoholic, and who regularly faces career challenges and difficulties with his personal life. This particular volume in the series features an assassin who has come to Oslo to kill someone, but the wrong man is killed, and when a quirk of the weather traps the killer in Norway instead of allowing them to escape, they realized their mistake and stick around to fix the problem.

The characters are all well-drawn, particularly Harry himself, and the ruthless, determined killer. I didn’t really get a specific feel for Oslo and the other settings, other than as cold, drab, emotionally-draining locales. The plot kept pulling me along, as well as the curiosity to find out how Harry would deal with the larger issues associated with the case — he turns out to be the kind of honorable detective who doesn’t necessarily follow all of the rules — occasionally doing the “wrong thing” for the “right reason”. I ended up really liking Harry, even if the plot of the novel didn’t truly hold my interest.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the rest of the Harry Hole series, by Jo Nesbø]

[ official The Redeemer page on the official English-language Jo Nesbø web site ]

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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