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“But Mommy says—” “Mommy doesn’t speak properly. Do you understand? Mommy comes from a place and a family where they’re not bothered about language.” His father’s breath smelled salty, of rotten seaweed. The front door banged.
The language in this book kind of grabs you roughly. There is nothing delicate about anything. The volume is always turned up high.
“I want an investigation team.” Hagen studied Harry. Like most other officers at the Police HQ, he regarded Harry as a self-willed, arrogant, argumentative, unstable alcoholic. Nevertheless, he was glad they were on the same side and that he wouldn’t have this man snapping at his heels. “How many?” he asked at length. “And for how long?” “Ten detectives. Two months.”
In a US mystery series the chief and Harry would be busting each others chops one way or the other instead of cooperating and accepting experience and self evident skills.
She leaned back against the tree trunk and slowly slumped to the ground. Felt the tears come without attempting to stop them this time. Because now she knew. There would be no afterward. “Shall we begin?” the voice said softly.
I have read this before about six years ago apparently but I have no recollection of the story! This is a mystery with detectives as well as an apparently very real monster!
Harry had walked barely a few yards into the forest when he was overtaken by an intense, almost unnatural silence. He shone the flashlight down on the ground in front of him because every time he pointed it into the forest, shadows ran between the trees like jittery spirits in the pitch black. Being isolated from the dark in a bubble
This is more like a horror book than a mystery book! Monsters and darkness abound!
He held his breath and listened. Don’t, he thought. Don’t let it happen. Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It’s the opposite; it’s a void, an absence of goodness.
“Compare everything,” Harry said. “Time of death, phase of moon, what was on TV, hair color of victims, whether any of them borrowed the same book from the library or attended the same seminar, the sum of their telephone numbers. We have to know how he selects them.”
Hagen sat at the table until Harry had left the restaurant. Only then did he notice that there were no carbon dioxide bubbles rising in the half-empty glass. He stole a few sidelong glances and put the glass cautiously to his lips. It tasted tart. Nonalcoholic cider.
Harry used to have a drinking problem!
And it was so easy! There he was going around thinking that what Gert Rafto said was true, that a good detective would always find the murderer. But he had met Harry Hole and had seen the frustration in the policeman’s frazzled face. It was the face of someone who comprehended nothing.
Hagen waited, wondering how he would tell his superiors that he had let Harry go alone. How he would explain that he was only Harry’s superior, not his boss and never had been. And that there was a logic there, too, and that actually he didn’t give a damn whether they understood or not.
