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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic (m) Nesbo, J. 2008 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Nesbø's storytelling abilities are incomparable. Nemesis is crime novel as art form and great entertainment." --USA Today
Detective Harry Hole must use his maverick methods once again as he investigates a slew of brutal bank robberies and the suspicious suicide of a female artist in this clever and harrowing installment in the Harry Hole series from the author of The Snowman.
Captured on closed-circuit television: A man walks into an Oslo bank, puts a gun to a cashier's head, and tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn't get his money fast enough, he pulls the trigger. The young woman dies--and two million Norwegian kroner disappear without a trace.
After a drunken evening with former girlfriend Anna Bethsen, Police Detective Harry Hole wakes up at home with a headache, no cell phone, and no memory of the past twelve hours. The same day, Anna is found shot dead in her bedroom, making Hole a prime suspect in the investigation led by his hated adversary, Tom Waaler. Meanwhile, the bank robberies continue with unparalleled savagery, sending rogue detective Hole from the streets of Oslo to steaming Brazil in a race to close two cases and clear his name. But Waaler isn't finished with his longtime nemesis quite yet.
The second Harry Hole novel to be released in America--following the critically acclaimed publication of The Redbird--Nemesis is a superb and surprising nail-biter that places Jo Nesbø in the company of Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, and other top masters of crime fiction. Nesbø has already received the Glass Key Award and the Booksellers' Prize, Norway's most prestigious literary awards. Nemesis is proof that there are certainly more honors in this extraordinary writer's future.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When a bank teller is shot during a holdup at the start of Norwegian bestseller Nesbo's beautifully executed heist drama, Oslo Insp. Harry Hole investigates, along with Beate Lonn, a young detective with the ability to remember every face she's ever seen. Meanwhile, Harry receives a call from Anna Bethsen, a woman he hasn't seen in years. After he meets Anna, recovering alcoholic Harry awakens the next morning with a hangover and the news that Anna is dead, apparently by her own hand. While Harry quietly looks into Anna's death, he and Beate uncover ties in their bank robbery case to one of Norway's most notorious bank robbers, who's currently in prison. The deeper Harry digs, the clearer it becomes that Anna's death is linked to the robbery. Expertly weaving plot lines from Hole's last outing to feature the inspector, The Redbreast (2007), Nesbo delivers a lush crime saga that will leave U.S. readers clamoring for the next installment. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Oslo's favorite cowboy, Inspector Harry Hole, tackles the case of the serial bank robber with an itchy trigger finger. A masked man walks into a bank, points a gun at a teller and announces that if the branch manager hasn't emptied the till into his sack within 25 seconds, he'll shoot her dead. When the manager runs six seconds over, the masked man makes good on his threat and escapes with the money. The subsequent investigation indicates that the robber was a professional unknown to the city's fraternity of bank robbers, someone who acted with cool precision throughout the procedure and left no trace of his identity behind. So why would he do something as rash as murder Stine Grette in the middle of a highly successful job? Before a single clue has turned up, Harry (The Redbreast, 2007) finds himself with a second case that cuts much deeper: the apparent suicide of Anna Bethsen, the ex-lover with whom he spent the evening of her death. The trail to the bank robber, whom Harry alone insists on calling the killer, leads from a photograph inside Anna's shoe to a not-so-successful importer to a bank-robbing prodigy holed up in Brazil. Before the case is over, Harry will become a fugitive framed for murder and forced to depend on his unlikely alliance with an imprisoned gypsy crime lord. The high-intensity action is threaded through a series of Chinese boxes revealing one false solution after another before the brilliantly inventive final twist. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When Norwegian Jo Nesbo's Redbreast landed on these shores in 2007, the acclaim was universal. Now Nesbo returns with another novel that is every bit the multitextured, complexly plotted, psychologically rich thriller that made Redbreast such an unqualified success. We pick up the life of Oslo detective Harry Hole, a recovering alcoholic whose closet is stuffed with unresolved issues concerning his obsession with his job and his inability to commit to a personal life, as he awaits the return of his new lover, Rakel, from Russia, where she hopes to be awarded permanent custody of her young son. But then he accepts an invitation to meet an old girlfriend, and suddenly he is sucked into the abyss all over again. Waking the next day at home with what appears to be a world-class hangover, he bemoans having fallen off the wagon, only to realize that's merely the tip of the iceberg: the girlfriend has been found murdered, and his rival in the Oslo police department may be behind an attempt to frame him. Does the girlfriend's death somehow tie in with the bank robbery and murder that he and his new partner are investigating? As Hole attempts to connect the sea of dots strewn in his path, he must battle not only his adversaries but his own demons, suddenly given new life. Nesbo manages the unlikely feat of exploring the inner life of his lead character in the thorough and compelling manner one associates with, say, Ruth Rendell, while at the same time juggling multiple, interlocking plot strands as dexterously as David Hewson. No doubt about it: Nesbo belongs on every crime-fiction fan's A-list.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
There are two ways to recognize a police procedural by the Norwegian author Jo Nesbo: the dense plot is supremely detailed, and (here's the real surprise) even the most dedicated career criminal will stop what he's doing and find time for a serious philosophical discussion - often, with his arresting officer. The title of NEMESIS (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99) refers to the implacable Greek goddess of justice and vengeance, so it's almost obligatory that everyone should be brooding on these subjects. Inspector Harry Hole, the sexy, soulful Oslo homicide detective who figures in Nesbo's novels, knows where he stands - out to get the villain who killed his partner in "Redbreast," if it takes him the rest of his life. "Revenge cleanses," he says, quoting Aristotle on catharsis. But during the course of investigating a brilliantly executed bank robbery, Harry discovers that revenge is a flexible concept. To the cunning killer, it's "the thinking man's reflex," "the foundation of civilization." But a Gypsy sage, himself a master bank robber doing prison time, honors a more primitive definition of blood vengeance ("the best and the most dangerous intoxicant God gave to humanity") when he fingers the killer Harry is hunting. On the other hand, "vengeance is one of those territorial things you men like so much," Harry's current beloved says as she admonishes him for confusing duty with a "Neanderthal urge." And his new partner, Beate Lonn, fresh from the police academy and gifted with an uncanny facility for recalling faces, won't even play the game. But when an old flame, an artist who calls her current work-in-progress "Nemesis," is found dead in her bed the morning after a drunken Harry passes out on her, it looks as if someone really does have it in for him. This murder along with the previous homicide, the robbery and a couple of fishy suicides interlock into one big puzzle that's eventually solved in a satisfying way. But to keep everything moving for almost 500 pages (and even with a crisp, clean translation by Don Bartlett), Nesbo falls back on coincidence and some other questionable devices. The problem isn't that he fails to tie up all his story lines, it's that he does it so carefully and neatly that the plot machinery is revealed for what it is - machinery. Thomas Perry writes legitimate escapist fiction. There's nothing remotely metaphorical about the flight path of RUNNER (Otto Penzler/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26) once a pregnant teenager shows up in Buffalo, chased from San Diego by six thugs who set off a bomb in a hospital, attempting to kidnap her. Perry's heroine, Jane Whitefield, has been living a quiet life as a doctor's wife, but there was a time when she used her Seneca Indian skills to create new identities for hunted people and guide them to safety. She may be rusty, but instinct kicks in when she learns that Christine Monahan is running from "a bully, a sneak, a loafer, a coward" under intense pressure to present his rich and overbearing parents with a grandchild. Childless and deeply unhappy about it, Jane steers her charge to Minneapolis, watching over Christine with a tenderness that's a distinct departure from her usual cut-to-the-chase style. While this curbs the breakneck action Perry is noted for, it's no loss for readers more fascinated by the nuts and bolts behind the fantasy of starting a new life with a new identity. Laura Benedict's CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS (Ballantine, $25) could be an object lesson in the decline of the psychological suspense story. Or it could just be an example of overwrought writing. The story opens well, with three adolescent girls from Cincinnati playing at witchcraft, trying to conjure an "angel" obliging enough to initiate them into womanhood. Thirteen-year-old Roxanne, Del and Alice are stunned when a young Roman Catholic priest materializes at the parochial school they attend, and the boldest of the girls stakes a claim on him. Things happen, the priest suffers, time passes. But once the friends are well and truly grown, they all come under the influence of the same mysterious stranger. And then one of them commits suicide. While there's potential here for a disturbing psychological study of adolescent cruelty and adult guilt, Benedict takes it around the bend with a plot that's heavy on sensationalism and light on logic. When did publishers get so smart about reissuing out-of-print mysteries? For the longest time, paperback reprints were just last year's best sellers, but not anymore. Pioneers of 1950s American noir like Ross Macdonald are shown true respect when Vintage Crime's Black Lizard imprint reissues their books in sturdy editions with properly sleazy covers. The classic English mystery of the 1930s and '40s also lives on so long as Rue Morgue keeps the faith by reprinting master craftsmen like Nicholas Blake and Michael Gilbert. But it takes a special kind of wit to resurrect Charlie Chan, as Academy Chicago has done With THE CHINESE PARROT and THE HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY (paper, $14.95 each), ingenious puzzle mysteries written by Earl Derr Biggers in the 1920s. Another brainstorm, on the part of Felony & Mayhem, has brought THE PEKING MAN IS MISSING (paper, $14.95) back into print. This speculative novel was written by Claire Taschdjian, an amateur archaeologist who was one of the last people to handle the bones of Peking Man before they were lost - or stolen - during World War II. Last year's best seller? Don't make me laugh. In Jo Nesbo's police procedurals, even criminals find time for serious philosophical discussion.
Library Journal Review
Norwegian Detective Harry Hole (introduced in Redbreast) has managed to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor in time to save his relationship with girlfriend Rachel and his fellow cops. He's gotten sober just in time: first, a cashier is killed in a bank robbery, but Harry is sure it was an intended murder; then, he has dinner with an old flame only to black out and wake up the next morning to the news of her death. With the help of Beate Lonn, a new officer in robbery with a gift for recognizing faces, he runs his own investigations, tracing leads all the way to Brazil and Egypt. Nesbo offers up another top-notch mystery thriller, thickly layered, perfectly plotted, and briskly paced to keep readers hooked. With ties to events in Redbreast, this is an excellent sequel, but it doesn't stand well on its own. Recommended for all fiction collections and essential for Scandinavian crime lovers. [This is actually the third in the series; the second, The Devil's Star, has not yet been published here.-Ed.]-Jessica E. Moyer, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.