David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-destructive-cop"
The Leopard
Harry Hole has got to be the most extreme homicide detective in suspense fiction. In the last episode he has his jaw broken; in this one he comes close to being killed twice, and a gun is not employed.
Harry is also an alcoholic and a drug abuser. At the beginning of THE LEOPARD he has resigned from his job and gone to Hong Kong where he acquires an opium addiction and is heavily in debt to gangsters over gambling losses. This is where his new partner, Kaja Solness, finds him. She tells him the department is willing to pay off his gambling debt if he will return to Norway and work on what looks like a new serial killer investigation. Harry is the only detective with experience working on that sort of crime as he solved the Snowman case and a previous string of murders in Australia.
The murder weapon in this case is extremely original. It's a torture device acquired in the Congo. It looks like a Christmas ornament with circular ridges; it is forced into the victim's mouth where it irritates the sides of his/her cheeks. A string protrudes from the victim's mouth. Eventually the first two victims pulled the string, causing needles to puncture the sides of their mouths and palettes, and bled out. The genius is that the murderer could be elsewhere when the victim actually died.
Subplots involve Harry's dad who is dying and Mikael Bellman the head of Kripos, an FBI-like homicide unit, who persuades the higher ups that the national investigative unit should handle all murder cases. Bellman is good-looking and charming but lacks Harry's imagination. Nesbo throws another hurdle in Harry's path when he includes a Bellman spy among Harry's confidants.
In THE SNOWMAN it was easy to pick out the killer. Nesbo must've listened to his critics because this time he manages to hide him/her pretty well, although conforming to the mystery convention where you show the murderer briefly so the reader can play along. But then he pulls a Jeffery Deaver twist (not a compliment) that made me want to hurl the book against the wall. But I soldiered on and Harry's relentless pursuit of the killer was still enough of a selling point to make me want to know what happens to this poor soul in the next episode.
Nesbo's main appeal is his ability to put Harry in such terrible circumstances that as a reader you think surely he's going to get the green Wienie this time, but he always manages to think his way out of it. Usually, with a series like this you know the author isn't going to kill off his bread and butter character, but with Nesbo you're not quite sure.
Harry is also an alcoholic and a drug abuser. At the beginning of THE LEOPARD he has resigned from his job and gone to Hong Kong where he acquires an opium addiction and is heavily in debt to gangsters over gambling losses. This is where his new partner, Kaja Solness, finds him. She tells him the department is willing to pay off his gambling debt if he will return to Norway and work on what looks like a new serial killer investigation. Harry is the only detective with experience working on that sort of crime as he solved the Snowman case and a previous string of murders in Australia.
The murder weapon in this case is extremely original. It's a torture device acquired in the Congo. It looks like a Christmas ornament with circular ridges; it is forced into the victim's mouth where it irritates the sides of his/her cheeks. A string protrudes from the victim's mouth. Eventually the first two victims pulled the string, causing needles to puncture the sides of their mouths and palettes, and bled out. The genius is that the murderer could be elsewhere when the victim actually died.
Subplots involve Harry's dad who is dying and Mikael Bellman the head of Kripos, an FBI-like homicide unit, who persuades the higher ups that the national investigative unit should handle all murder cases. Bellman is good-looking and charming but lacks Harry's imagination. Nesbo throws another hurdle in Harry's path when he includes a Bellman spy among Harry's confidants.
In THE SNOWMAN it was easy to pick out the killer. Nesbo must've listened to his critics because this time he manages to hide him/her pretty well, although conforming to the mystery convention where you show the murderer briefly so the reader can play along. But then he pulls a Jeffery Deaver twist (not a compliment) that made me want to hurl the book against the wall. But I soldiered on and Harry's relentless pursuit of the killer was still enough of a selling point to make me want to know what happens to this poor soul in the next episode.
Nesbo's main appeal is his ability to put Harry in such terrible circumstances that as a reader you think surely he's going to get the green Wienie this time, but he always manages to think his way out of it. Usually, with a series like this you know the author isn't going to kill off his bread and butter character, but with Nesbo you're not quite sure.
