Nemesis (Harry Hole)
by Jo Nesbo
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jo NesboTranslator: Don Bartlett
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-06
ISBN: 0061655503
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Harper
Book Reviews of Nemesis (Harry Hole)
Book Review: A Commitment
Summary: 3 Stars
In short: there are many reasons to recommend "Nemesis" but it grows convoluted and out of control as the book rolls along.
Having read "Nemesis" without the benefit of knowing what happened in "The Redbreast " (my mistake) I concur with other reviewers who urged reading "The Redbreast" first. There are many strands and relationships to understand and if you have a choice, start with "The Redbreast" if other reviewers are correct. I was in a fog in a few spots.
Still, the first half of "Nemesis" is meaty, rich and packs a punch. There are a few cliché elements to Hole and a bit too much about the bleak weather of Oslo, but the story is gripping and the clues are yanked from the murder and bank-robbery scene with keen tenacity.
During the first half of "Nemesis," I was feeling as if Nesbo might be moving to the top of my list. The pace is grinding, but interesting. It had a Dickensian feel. The scenes are sharply set-up and deliver neat bits of information that kept tugging the plot along. The writing is straightforward (though awkwardly translated at times) but vivid, too. "Astrid Monsen was forty-five years old and made her living by translating French literature in the study of her flat in Sorgenfrigata. She didn't have a man in her life, but she had a tape loop of a dog barking, which she put on at night. Harry heard steps and at least three locks being released behind the door before it opened a fraction and a small, freckled face peered out from beneath black curls."
You come to spots where the action bogs down--a whole paragraph thinking about how a cigarette is made--but Harry Hole's ruminations are also interesting and make him a complete character. When Hole receives permission to run a parallel investigation into the troubling and audacious bank robbery that has left a bank worker dead, you root for him.
And then comes the last stretch, where "Nemesis" blows up. Late in the book, Nesbo ramps up the point of view of the "bad cop" and it seemed to me a bit of a trick, to suddenly be asked to enter the world of a darker, menacing cop. I think I was so invested in Harry Hole that I found myself a bit miffed at being asked to live inside the head of another cop--and so late in the game. The plot grows complicated and I grew weary.
At nearly 500 pages, "Nemesis" is a commitment.
I haven't read much Scandinavian crime fiction--a little Henning Mankell, a little Peter Hoeg--but I'd probably go back to Mankell first.
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