The Redeemer (Harry Hole, #6)

by Jo Nesbø

Bobo had dragged him down into the trench and shouted in triumph: “To us a little redeemer is born!”

was given the code name that would follow him until the Serbs occupied and razed his hometown to ashes, killing Bobo, massacring doctors and patients at the hospital, imprisoning and torturing any who offered resistance. It was a bitter paradox of a name. Given to him by the one person he had not been able to save. Mali spasitelj. The little redeemer.

Harry was under no illusions about his popularity in Crime Squad.

Beate smiled. She knew Harry now. First, intuition, then the facts. Because intuition provides facts, too; it’s all the information the crime scene gives you, but which the brain cannot articulate right away.

Not the sympathy he could feel for the victim or for the next of kin, but for the person who for one heartrending moment sees his own pathetic humanity.

Harry often wished he had been wired in a different way and that he possessed a bit more of the social survival instinct most people have. But he didn’t, and he never had.

“Our founder, William Booth, said his best men were women. Nevertheless, we are like the rest of society. Stupid, self-assured men ruling over smart women with a fear of heights.”

“Me, too. Doubt is faith’s shadow. If you are unable to doubt you can’t be a believer. It’s the same as with courage, Inspector. If you

are unable to feel fear, you cannot be courageous.”