Death in Oslo

Imagine it is 2004 and instead of George W Bush sweeping to a second term as president on the back of his War on Terror, he is defeated and Helen Barclay becomes the first woman to take the reins in the Whitehouse. Helen has secrets and is relieved that they did not come to light during the election campaign. For her first overseas trip she chooses to accept an invitation to visit Norway. On the first morning of her visit, however, the Secret Service get a nasty shock. The President appears to have been kidnapped. As this extraordinary event has happen on Norwegian soil, the Norwegians take the lead on the investigation and Adam Stubo is asked to be the main liaison between the Norwegians and the FBI.
I read this straight on from The show more Final Murder and was very surprised by an abrupt change of direction. Whilst Vik and Stubo remain the core characters and the key to the novel, in this outing they are almost immediately separated from each other and Vik, in particular, takes a back seat. This is a clever story, full of surprises making it a high quality thriller. Immediately engaging and neatly constructed. Give the series a try, that's my verdict. show less

I liked, and with later volumes loved, Anne Holt's Hanne Willemsen novels; so it was natural that I ended up trying out one of her other series. Death in Oslois the third volume in her Modus series which centers around psychologist Johanne Vik and police officer Adam Stubo, and it is sort of a cross-over, as Hanne Willemsen actually also plays an important part in this volume, though we only get an outside perspective on her.

Holt loves to subvert crime novel clichés; in the previous Modusnovel she did this mostly by interweaving the criminal case with the domestic lives of her protagonists, like them discussing a murder while changing nappies - something quite a few readers took issue with, but which I found rather endearing. The show more private life of Vik and Stubo, however, plays only a very minor role in Death in Oslo; this novel follows another but (just check the reviews on Goodreads) equally successful strategy of frustrating its readers. Spoilers to follow, so you may want to stop reading here if you care to avoid them.

The point where Death in Oslo goes most blatantly against expectations readers bring to a work of crime fiction is in denying them any kind of neat and orderly solution, in fact a neat and orderly anything. Which is quite fitting, as the novel is very political, to the point that it is more of a political thriller than a police procedural, and politics of course do tend to be very messy. (And as Anne Holt served for a short period as Norway's Minister of Justice, it can be assumed that those parts carry a particular authenticity, anchored by the weight of first-hand experience.)

Now, it is nothing new or extraordinary for crime novels to leave some things unresolved as an indication of realism, but the way Death in Oslo goes about it feels almost like an act of purposeful aggression towards its readers. The novel is centered around the abduction of the first female president of the United States of America (entirely fictional, in case you had not noticed, and likely to remain so for quite some time to come). We do meet the man who is pulling the strings quite early on, but through the whole course of the novel he remains at several removes from the crime itself, and not only is he not caught, the police never even come close to identifying him, and at the end, he is left having learned from the experienced and scheming to come up with a better plan next time.

For most of the time, the police are not only in the dark about the perpetrators of the crime but also about what exactly happened and even which crime was actually committed. And when the abducted president is found, it only is by a coincidence of hair-raising unlikelihood. That latter bit (the kidnappers hide the president away in the basement of the building Hanne Willemsen lives in, of all places, where she is found by her household aid) I actually had some issues with myself and at first assumed it to be some really sloppy plotting; but in retrospect and seeing how the novel as a whole plays out, I am now convinced that this was done intentionally by the author in order to mess things up even more.

But that it was done on purpose does not mean that I have to like it. I can see what Holt was aiming for here and in other place, but I can't but feel that she is going about it rather heavy-handedly and has in fact been doing this both subtler and more effectively before, as in the later volume of the Hanne Willemsen series. I am all for subverting genre clichés and frustrating reader expectations but just doing the exact opposite is rather reminiscent of a child throwing a hissy fit and hurling their toys into a corner. What I am missing in Death in Oslo - and which Anne Holt has proven capable of delivering in earlier novels of hers - is an actual engagement with the clichés and expectations that would show why the have to be subverted and frustrated. As it stands, the novel's response to that question seems to be "Because" and that just is not enough.

Having said that, Holt still knows how to spin a cracking yarn, and if you can overlook those issues or do not mind them too much, it still is quite an entertaining read. And she also knows how to create interesting, complex characters, so Death in Oslo is rwarding on that level, too, and I don't regret the time I have spent reading it (too much). show less

La fanta politica non mi piace molto, ma Anne Holt è riuscita come sempre ad affascinarmi.
Al quadro delle indagini intreccia le storie dei suoi personaggi, questa volta include quelle di entrambe le serie, e la caccia ai colpevoli si mischia abilmente alle vicende umane e sentimentali e ti costringe a restare incollata al libro fino all'ultima pagina. Chiaramente gli USA non hanno ancora avuto una donna Presidente, ma l'arroganza di questo paese nei confronti degli altri stati, le manie di persecuzione e le crisi che si scatenano con delle previsioni seppur fallaci, l'abilità di edulcorare i fatti e coprire anche ai media verità inconfessabili sono qui egregiamente descritte.
Indimenticabile la scena del doganiere Norvegese che show more riesce a disarmare un intero contingente di arroganti agenti della CIA: mi viene ancora da ridere. show less

There are a few editing and plotting slips in this novel, not the least that between the covers the US President is Helen Bentley (not Barclay as stated on the dustjacket).

I had already "met" Joahnne Vik and Adam Stubo in a previous title in the series, and also Hanne Wilhelmson who becomes important in the second half of the novel in 1222.

The plot is an interesting one- the disappearance/kidnapping of the American President while on her first overseas state visit. Norway had been chosen because it was "friendly" and relatively small, but the President had chosen to come on Norway's National Day. In retrospect the visit was low key and the President was not accompanied by the huge entourage that had been expected. When she disappeared show more overnight from her hotel, the investigation becomes a struggle for power and control by the Oslo police, the FBI and the CIA. Sightings of the President are at first numerous and then she disappears completely.

Despite some plot threads that for me were not sufficiently resolved, an engrossing read. show less

Death in Oslo, the third in a series featuring the profiler Johanne Vik, starts with an intriguing premise. A woman has just been elected president of the United States, and as the book opens with her thought: I got away with it. But of course, she hasn’t, really. Her first foreign trip is to a safe country, the home of her ancestors, Norway. But the unthinkable happens. Madame President disappears – on the 17th of May, of all days, Norway’s independence day and an occasion for raucous partying. Johanne is upset when her partner, Adam Stubo, is drafted to work on the crisis. Johanne has her reasons to avoid the FBI agent who is working on the case. She takes their small daughter with her to a secret retreat, the apartment of her show more mentor, wheelchair-bound Hanne Wilhelmsen (who features in a series that has mostly not been translated yet except for 1222). As Adam deals with the public side of the investigation, Johanne and Hanne come into it via a different route. And all the while, the reader knows who is behind the disappearance. We just don’t know how he pulled it off – or why.

Death in Olso is great fun. It’s a complex story with a lot of characters from all over the world, but Holt draws them so skillfully that it’s no trouble keeping them apart. She also does a nice line in puzzles and keeps us guessing, right up to the end – and even then, things aren’t tied up neatly. There is a whacking great coincidence on which much of the story hinges, but as hinges go, it’s not squeaky and moves very smoothly. I particularly enjoyed the consternation of Norwegian officials when the unthinkable happens, and the contrast between their response and that of American security agencies. All in all, it’s terrifically entertaining and is peopled with memorable characters I would like to meet again. show less

Washington D. C., January 2005, Helen Lardahl Bentley takes the oath of office as the first female president of the United States. As the crowd cheers, President Bentley is thinking, "I got away with it . . . ."

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, businessman Abdallah al-Rahman is watching the inaugural event on television from his soundproof exercise room. To no one he says, "She actually thinks she got away with it!"

And in Oslo, Norway, watching the televised event, Hanne Wilhemsen speculates about the new president's spotless past to her friend, former FBI profiler Johanne Vik, and muses, "But there's always something . . . some little secret . . . ."

Thus begins Death in Oslo, Anne Holt's intricately plotted third entry in the Adam Stubo-Johanne show more Vik series. This fast-paced thriller with Machiavellian overtones really takes off when President Bentley, on her first official state visit to Norway, disappears from her locked and guarded hotel room in the middle of the night. Immediately, the security forces of both countries scramble to find the missing head of state before the unthinkable happens. The task is complicated by territorial tensions between the two national security forces and infighting within the FBI. When Warren Scifford, head of a much-resented specialized team within the FBI, arrives on the scene to take charge of the American investigation, he requests that his former student, Johanne Vik, be assigned from Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service to help him. But Johanne doesn't work for the NCIS so Scifford instead asks for Johanne's husband, Adam Stubo. But Johanne has her own secrets from the past regarding her former FBI mentor and threatens Adam that, if he accepts the assignment to work with Scifford, their marriage is over. Adam, however, cannot turn his back on duty and reluctantly reports to work, angry that Johanne has chosen not to confide in him about this man from her past. Everyone, it seems, has "some little secret."

Anne Holt is a master at creating chilling characters whose scariest quality is their immense patience in stalking their victims. The international scale of,Death in Oslo ups the ante for the consequences of failure in the eternal war of good versus evil. The ups and downs of Johanne's and Adam's domestic life provide an effective counterbalance to the international feuding between nations. This is definitely a suspense thriller you'll want to read, even if you haven't read the first two. show less

I liked, as usual, Anne Holt's creation of the characters. Even though some of them annoy me, this feeling just proves that her creations are lifelike and realistic. The general idea for the book (American president kidnapped, though no one know why, and a man we know is planning something, though at first we have no idea what and why) is really good and you don't really want to put the book down before you know the answers to all your questions.
However, I didn't like some of the answers and some of the twists of the plot. And I felt that the ending came a bit too soon and was a bit disappointing. And that made the book just average.