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85th out of 514 books
—
501 voters
Headhunters
by
Jo Nesbø,
Don Bartlett
Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter, and he’s a master of his profession. But one career simply can’t support his luxurious lifestyle and his wife’s fledgling art gallery. At an art opening one night he meets Clas Greve, who is not only the perfect candidate for a major CEO job, but also, perhaps, the answer to his financial woes: Greve just so happens to mention that he...more
Paperback, 265 pages
Published
September 6th 2011
by Vintage
(first published 2008)
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Typical Nesbo (of late). Why have two or three plot twists, when you can have five or six (indeed, as usual, the last twist may have been one way-too-many). I personally thought it was more engaging before it turned into a corporate espionage thriller (i.e., when it was just about a cocky man being cuckholded by an even cockier man). I still prefer thrillers that are either 1) more connected with "real" issues and themes (see le Carre, Menking, Larsson, Steinhauer), or 2) are more satisfying as...more
What a great cover eh? Take a second look at it....creepy and clever. And so is the author Jo Nesbo. I picked up Headhunters thinking that it would feature Nesbo's recurring series character Detective Harry Hole. I started reading, realized that it wasn't and felt slightly disappointed. But I lost that feeling about 10 pages in. Nesbo has written an ingenious, intricately plotted stand alone thriller that had me hooked from start to finish.
Roger Brown is a professional recruiter, a 'headhunter'...more
Roger Brown is a professional recruiter, a 'headhunter'...more
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It’s check your brain at the door time. If this actually won best novel in Norway in 2008 (Norwegian Book Club Prize), it must be more a commentary on the sad state of Norwegian literature in that particular year. Although, perhaps out of sentimentality for Nesbo, I am still recommending it. A good beach or airline read. Nothing more. It pretty much relies on one plot twist, some rather unbelievable developments and collusions, not one character is likeable, and there is no real character develo...more
8 likes
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This was my first time reading a Nesbo book and I did enjoy it. With its many twists and turns, it became a novel of intrigue and a good bit of mystery and daring do. I enjoyed the interplay of the intelligent characters trying to outwit one another in a game of high stakes and art theft.
The main character, a man whose thoughts we are privy to us throughout the book, Roger Brown is a very successful headhunter who seems to have it all together. He makes a ton of money, has a gorgeous wife, and i...more
The main character, a man whose thoughts we are privy to us throughout the book, Roger Brown is a very successful headhunter who seems to have it all together. He makes a ton of money, has a gorgeous wife, and i...more
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“An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I’m afraid to say, has been understood.” (loc. 773)
“The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. And mediocre heads on tall bodies.” (loc. 518)
“Noble, loyal souls are often handicapped by loyalty to even the basest of individuals. Well, especially the base individuals.”
Synopsis:
Roger Brown, the narrator of this novel is one of the best Norvegian corporate headhun...more
The "hero" in Headhunter, Nordic Noir master Jo Nesbo's stand alone crime fiction, is Roger Brown. Brown is a manipulative, cruel, greedy, successful corporate headhunter-who is hunting more than symbolic trophies. He subsidizes his lavish lifestyle with a secondary career as an art thief. His one virtue is his love for his wife Diana: not that he loves her enough to give her the one thing she deeply wants, a child. Instead, he gives her an art gallery (which ties in nicely with his second caree...more
Creating a shallow and unlikeable protagonist and then setting him up as your hero makes for a tough challenge, even as he's being cuckolded and targeted for murder, and I don't think Nesbo ever quite gets there. I love the Hole books and all their byzantine plot threads, but this is the first Nesbo where I wondered if the translation was creating some static. A lot of the blurbs talk about this being some sort of black comedy and I didn't really get vibe either.
After a wandering start where we...more
After a wandering start where we...more
Okay, I did like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I love Kenneth Branaugh in PBS' Wallander, and I like shopping at IKEA, but that doesn't mean everything from Scandinavia is equally good. Headhunters is Exhibit A. It IS a fast-moving, competently written mystery, but the first-person character is unlikeable (which he knows! and trades on!), and the scene in the outhouse is among the most disgusting I've ever read. The ending? Unbelievable--and I mean that in a bad way.
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I love the Harry Hole series, but this book was waaaaaaaaay too gross for me. Objectively I can definitely see the skill required to write this plot with style, but subjectively... yuck. I think someone blurbed it saying it was a witty caper in the vein of Tarantino or the Coen brothers, and that is EXACTLY what it reminded me of. So if that's your sort of thing, you'll probably love it. Me, I'm sticking with Inspector Hole.
What a well-choreographed dance of duplicity, malice and mistrust, with Machiavellian overtones. It read like a screen-play, which means the recently released movie based on the book must be pretty good. The movie probably will never get to Charleston, but hopefully will hit our radar at some point. The main character is despicable and unlikeable, yet I found myself sort of rooting for him, since everyone else was worse. I'd never have made it in the high-power business world.
It's only looking a...more
It's only looking a...more
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Jun 13, 2012
Alex Sheldon Savva
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Shelves:
crime-thriller-fiction,
most-memorable
Corporate headhunters is an interesting premise for this plot.
Perhaps more so to me as I have a love/hate relationship with the corporate lifestyle.
I love the tailor made designer suits, the grand office buildings, the elegant lifestyle and prestigious status.
And yet, I despise the greed, power, arrogance and apathy that accompanies it all.
For they are society's elite, and often villains in disguise.
So it was with great pleasure that I got to read from the perspective of such an individual. Not...more
Perhaps more so to me as I have a love/hate relationship with the corporate lifestyle.
I love the tailor made designer suits, the grand office buildings, the elegant lifestyle and prestigious status.
And yet, I despise the greed, power, arrogance and apathy that accompanies it all.
For they are society's elite, and often villains in disguise.
So it was with great pleasure that I got to read from the perspective of such an individual. Not...more
I liked this book, but not because I liked a single one of the characters in it. In fact, I was about 50 pages in when I decided that the protagonist is a despicable person who deserves whatever’s coming to him. And yet, I didn’t stop reading. Within the next 50 pages, I became hooked. I still didn’t sympathize with any of the characters, but I was enthralled by the drama that played out, compelled to find out what twisted, messed-up thing was going to happen next. Although some parts are ridicu...more
This is a stand-alone thriller from Nesbo, who is most well-known for his excellent Harry Hole series. It takes a bit of getting used to as the pace and style of the book is completely different. It is told in first-person from the view of Roger Brown, a high-powered corporate "headhunter" who is also a professional art thief. The book starts very slowly as it paints a vivid picture of its main character, who comes off as an completely self-adsorbed jackass. Things pick up when he meets Clas Gre...more
Headhunter Roger Brown is the narrator, and immediately you know he feels shortchanged by his... um.. lack of hight. For his interviews with clients he relies on Imbau, Reid & Buckley techniques of interrogation (used by law enforcement). Also during the interviews he brings up art collections and thus also is able to gather intel needed for his other career as art thief. This novel and Roger Brown are a good deal grittier that The Good Thief's Guide series by Chris Ewan which have a lighter...more
Brilliant. 10 star read.
What clever writing to make the protagonist (who initially is quite loathsome for all his social climbing, his cheating and love of material wealth no matter the cost to achieve it)... someone that one roots for and finds empathy with halfway thru the novel. One cannot help but want the young man to succeed once one is introduced to far worse characters during the course of the book. Better to stick with the devil one knows .....His greatest weakness and therefore the mo...more
What clever writing to make the protagonist (who initially is quite loathsome for all his social climbing, his cheating and love of material wealth no matter the cost to achieve it)... someone that one roots for and finds empathy with halfway thru the novel. One cannot help but want the young man to succeed once one is introduced to far worse characters during the course of the book. Better to stick with the devil one knows .....His greatest weakness and therefore the mo...more
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Lost in translation? Me or this novel? A third of the way through this got so twisted I couldn't figure out if this was supposed to be humorous or serious. If this is supposed to be serious where is the suspense? For this reason this novel skirts along a knife's edge, falls off and gets all cut to pieces. There was too much explaining the action rather than the real thing. Too much of this takes place in his head as he thinks so much and lets the reader know every thought. The main reason for th...more
This is not a Harry Hole story but its a real page turner. There are lots of twists and turns and its difficult to review a book like this without spoilers.
Roger Brown is a successful Headhunter by day and an art thief by night. He has the perfect opportunity to find out about peoples treasured art collections without them suspecting anything. Everything is going fine until he meets his match when he interviews Clas Greve. Greve knows all of the interview techniques turning the tables on his int...more
Roger Brown is a successful Headhunter by day and an art thief by night. He has the perfect opportunity to find out about peoples treasured art collections without them suspecting anything. Everything is going fine until he meets his match when he interviews Clas Greve. Greve knows all of the interview techniques turning the tables on his int...more
Comes from the land of Lisbeth Salander, another thriller that excels in keeping the reader hooked up. The story develops slowly, the initial part is mostly all about the headhunter itself, Mr. Roger Brown and his dual life. His charisma as a headhunter and his con-game with his beautiful wife and his relentless art theft.
Enter Clas Grave. Handsome, sexy, suave and perfect match for the job Roger is headhunting. But he also has an invaluable piece of art and Roger puts his steps into the alluri...more
Enter Clas Grave. Handsome, sexy, suave and perfect match for the job Roger is headhunting. But he also has an invaluable piece of art and Roger puts his steps into the alluri...more
Here's a case where you root for an a-hole to get away with everything. A sleazy corporate headhunter, best in the game, steals art on the side because he can't afford to keep his wife in the lifestyle he believes she deserves, a lifestyle that includes running an art gallery of her own. When he meets his match, he still can't help himself from trying for one last big score. Twisted corporate culture meets twisted criminal underworld in a melee of originality and cliche.
I was pleasantly surpris...more
I was pleasantly surpris...more
I liked the book well enough as far as having a pleasurable read. But the plot line was a little convoluted. I think I have decided too that there is or ought to be a distinction between what is plausible in a story and probable. The notion that a corporate headhunter would have a dark side involving art thievery is plausible in as much as many of us have our inner Hyde character. But it's not all that probable. From an emotional or psychological standpoint the personality characteristics that m...more
If you love uplifting stories with endearing characters you can really care about . . . well, go somewhere else, because every player in this blackly funny thriller is either a predator, a victim, or in the case of one character, something even worse. Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo is best known for his Harry Hole detective series, but this stand-alone novel is wilder, nastier, and funnier than any of them.
Roger Brown is a short, insecure, and rather unattractive man who has managed to snag a beauti...more
Eh. I'm a big fan of Nesbo's Harry Hole series (I almost typed that name without giggling like a fourteen-year-old boy ... but not quite), and I was excited to see how Nesbo handled a first-person stand-alone narrative.
Not very well, apparently. His writing lacks the crisp tension I'm used to from his other books, which I might blame on the translation were it not the same translator. The main character, Roger Brown, is fairly well drawn, but none of the other characters are. It's hard to see wh...more
Not very well, apparently. His writing lacks the crisp tension I'm used to from his other books, which I might blame on the translation were it not the same translator. The main character, Roger Brown, is fairly well drawn, but none of the other characters are. It's hard to see wh...more
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Dec 09, 2011
Linda Branham Greenwell
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
mystery-crime
When I first started reading the book I was unsure if I would like it - Corporate headhunters are just not interesting to me :)
BUT I continued reading because I do like Jo Nesbo's books
Roger Brown, the lead headhunter in Jo Nesbo's book, works for an Oslo employment agency that recommends candidates for top management positions.
Roger's wife, Diana, is beautiful and Roger does everything he can to keep her happy. She runs an art gallery that is losing money. Roger needs to supplement his headhun...more
BUT I continued reading because I do like Jo Nesbo's books
Roger Brown, the lead headhunter in Jo Nesbo's book, works for an Oslo employment agency that recommends candidates for top management positions.
Roger's wife, Diana, is beautiful and Roger does everything he can to keep her happy. She runs an art gallery that is losing money. Roger needs to supplement his headhun...more
Nov 08, 2011
Slávek Rydval
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
non-english-authors,
read-2011
Není to příliš dávno, co jsem si tu pobrečel nad Nemesisem v současné době hodně čteného Joa Nesboa. Přesto, když jsem dostal možnost přečíst si před oficiálním vydáním jeho další knihu, využil jsem jí. O Lovci hlav jsem neměl informací, ani co by se do hršle vešlo, proto mě hned po otevření zásilky překvapila jeho útlost. Kriminálka jednadvacátého století a jen 250 stran? První bod k dobru!
Prolog, první část, druhá část… Jasně, čte se to rychle. Netřeba se textem příliš zaměstnávat, jde o oddec...more
Prolog, první část, druhá část… Jasně, čte se to rychle. Netřeba se textem příliš zaměstnávat, jde o oddec...more
Apr 14, 2013
Indah Threez Lestari
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
in-english,
movie-tv-tie-in
276 - 2013
Buatku, membaca dan menonton film bukan hobi yang bisa dipisahkan, karena yang menjadi pembeda di antara keduanya hanya media yang digunakan dalam storytelling. Karenanya, aku suka novel-novel movie-tie-in. Ada film yang diangkat dari novel? Baca dulu novelnya, baru tonton filmnya. Ada naskah film yang dinovelisasi? Tonton filmnya dulu, baca baca novelnya.
Itu kondisi idealnya, karena sering juga terjadi sebaliknya sih. Aku sudah membeli novelisasi film Spider-Man 3 sebelum filmnya bere...more
Buatku, membaca dan menonton film bukan hobi yang bisa dipisahkan, karena yang menjadi pembeda di antara keduanya hanya media yang digunakan dalam storytelling. Karenanya, aku suka novel-novel movie-tie-in. Ada film yang diangkat dari novel? Baca dulu novelnya, baru tonton filmnya. Ada naskah film yang dinovelisasi? Tonton filmnya dulu, baca baca novelnya.
Itu kondisi idealnya, karena sering juga terjadi sebaliknya sih. Aku sudah membeli novelisasi film Spider-Man 3 sebelum filmnya bere...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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"Headhunters" by Jo Nesbo is a dark thriller of a story about a self-esteem lacking recruitment agent whose pleasant, quite self-absorbed middle class life is turned upside down when one of his recruits rebuffs his job placement advances - and then tries to kill him. It's a fast paced story riddled with twists and unpredictable and unexpected turns, narrated with such a noir feel that it is almost to the point of being a black comedy in places. Roger, also an art thief on the sly, confronts the...more
Nesbo escribe bien, lo he dicho antes y lo repito; sabe meterte en la historia, sabe dibujar personajes, darles credibilidad, dotarlos de vida. En Headhunters lo hace y lo hace bien, pero este Nesbo es diferente. Este Nesbo no es el que escribe historias intimistas y reflexivas con un detective apenado y triste, Headhunters no tiene esa cadencia que hace que la novela se despliegue poco a poco, paso a paso aunque manteniendo al lector en vilo y con el culo pegado a la silla. Headhunters es un be...more
I have heard such good reviews about Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series so when I saw Headhunters at the library I grabbed it.
I was a little dissapointed in it. I found that there was just too many story lines going all over the place and not enough information to follow them all.
I found that the plots jumped around too much which confused me.
I found the beginning and the ending quite interesting but started to lose interest in the middle of the book.
I was a little dissapointed in it. I found that there was just too many story lines going all over the place and not enough information to follow them all.
I found that the plots jumped around too much which confused me.
I found the beginning and the ending quite interesting but started to lose interest in the middle of the book.
I have only just started reading Jo Nesbo and loved The Leopard - however didn't really like this this at all. Found the whole plot very unbelievable and quite contrived - almost could think it was written by someone completely different.
An average plot and not particularly well written, I had no sympathy for any of the characters - unlike Harry Hole- who were all very unlikable.
Easier to follow than the Leopard but only because the plot was very simplistic.
An average plot and not particularly well written, I had no sympathy for any of the characters - unlike Harry Hole- who were all very unlikable.
Easier to follow than the Leopard but only because the plot was very simplistic.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scandinavian and ...: Jo Nesbø's Headhunters out as a movie | 15 | 84 | Apr 04, 2013 05:46am | |
| World Mysteries a...: Jo Nesbø's Headhunters as a movie | 4 | 49 | Oct 09, 2012 05:08pm | |
| Pulp Fiction: Headhunters | 3 | 16 | Sep 28, 2012 07:09am | |
| Audiobooks: free download audible.co.uk | 8 | 52 | Aug 28, 2012 10:47am |
Jo Nesbø is a bestselling Norwegian author and musician. He was born in Oslo and grew up in Molde. Nesbø graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics with a degree in economics. Nesbø is primarily famous for his crime novels about Detective Harry Hole, but he is also the main vocals and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre. In 2007 Nesbø also released his first children's book, Dokt...more
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“When I propose a candidate for a job I don't do it because the person in question is the best but because he is the one the client will employ. I provide them with a head that is good enough, placed on a body they want. [...] The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. And mediocre heads on tall bodies.”
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5 people liked it
“They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchanging confidences about how to keep their sugar daddies suitably happy, suitably jealous and suitably on their toes.”
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2 people liked it
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