Ooof. I'm exhausted. The length of this novel - more than 700 pages - may have something to do with it. But the impossible pace and number of sub-plots in this very noir indeed detective novel keep the adrenalin buzzing. There are plenty of murders which are the stuff of nightmares, plenty of political (with a small 'p')shenanigans back at Police HQ, and a sleuth, Harry Hole, who's the stuff of nightmares too: alcoholic, drug-addict, anti-authority. It was a can't-put-it-down read, but at the same time, I'm in no hurry to read any more Harry Hole sagas: I can't stand the pace. My next read may be something soothing, an everyday story of countryfolk ( )

(2009) Harry Hole is good as usual, but this one got a little bit too violent, even for Nesb�.Kirkus: Another spooky gothic by Norwegian gloomster Nesb¨ (The Snowman, 2011, etc.), the poet laureate of boreal psychopathy. If there were a dictionary-definition image for numbed world-weariness, Oslo detective Harry Hole would be it, in just the way that Edvard Munch's The Scream is the canonical image of terror. (When the film is made, only the Stellan Skarsg?rd of Insomnia will do.) As Nesb¨'s newest procedural opens, Hole has taken himself into a Hong Kong exile, where he ponders the smog that builds up thicker and thicker from mainland China and fills his own modest room with the smoke from his opium water pipe. Enter Kaja Solness, Oslo gumshoe extraordinaire, who needs to find him immediately. Naturally, something very ugly has happened back home; a murder bloody enough to make a Viking of yore lose his lunch has occurred, involving a cruel instrument of torture that shoots out metal spikes: ?Two needles pierced the windpipe and one the right eye, one the left. Several needles penetrated the rear part of the palate and reached the brain.? Yuck. Only Hole, it seems, can divine the mind of someone sick enough to pull off such a thing, and once Hole, plagued by the memories of earlier murders and a constant craving for drink and smoke, is pulled into the case early on in the novel, it's all a go-go-go rush across the continents: Europe, of course, and Asia, but also Africa, where an ugly war is raging off in some backwater of the Congo and where, it develops, a person of interest is conducting a nasty trade. It is vintage Nesb¨ to throw in red herrings and MacGuffins, but also to have Hole engage in a little John Woo?style dance, cop and suspect, in which the bad guy has a definite chance of taking out the good one. Nesb¨'s formula includes plenty of participation by Kaja, a very capable woman, and plenty of current geopolitical backdrop, making Nesb¨ a worthy mysterian-cum-social-critic in the Stieg Larsson tradition. But will good prevail? It's anything but a foregone conclusion.Good for a nightmare or three¥a taut, fast-paced thriller with wrenching twists and turns.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011ISBN: 978-0-307-59587-4Page Count: 544Publisher: KnopfReview Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2011Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011

I find that the Norwegian setting intrigues me. The well hidden plot intrigues me. Nesbo does get violent, if that's a concern. I could do with less, but I enjoy the pace and characters. ( )

Every book I reach a point where I think, "No, it's too bleak, I can't continue reading," and then Nesbo hooks me right back in. That's pretty impressive. ( )

3.5 this was OK but have preferred others in the Harry Hole series ( )