Harry is out of his depth. Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can. He's not supposed to get too involved. When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth.
As Harry tracks down the murderer of a Norwegian TV star reduced to living in desperate circumstances, he is fully formed as the difficult, vulnerable personality we have come to know. The evocation of Australia itself has the customary Nesbo expertise -- Barry Forshaw Independent The Bat appeared in Norway in 1997, and it's a fascinating book, filling in the gaps in Hole's biography and telling the story of the murder case in Australia that cemented his reputation as a brilliant investigator... It is a stunning opening to the series -- Joan Smith Sunday Times Every book in the series is a fantastic standalone novel but each refers to some element of a previous novel and all mention this, the first case that brought Harry to prominence at home in Norway . Nesbo, also a singer and songwriter with Norwegian rock band Di Derre, is a terrific writer who knows how to build a story, taking you slowly to the top of a rollercoaster before sending you hurtling towards a solution that you never see coming -- Andy Hoban Sunday Express Scandinavian noir goes Down Under. what's fascinating is seeing Hole already equipped with all the obsessional attributes that would merge so brilliantly in subsequent novels -- Marcel Berlins The Times Even with this first book Nesbo's command of the idiom is completely in place - there is no sense that the writer was finding his feet and aficionados will be very pleased to slide this onto their bookshelves alongside the other Harry Hole novels -- Barry Forshaw Daily Express
Author
About Jo Nesbo
Jo Nesbø, musician, economist and author of the best-selling series featuring Detective Harry Hole, has won many prizes for his novels, including the Glass Key, the Riverton Prize and the Norwegian Bookclub prize for best ever Norwegian crime novel. His first novel to be published in English was The Devil's Star and the second, The Redbreast, was shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie International Dagger. He lives in Oslo.
