Those who know Jo Nesbø’s favorite hero know to what extent Harry Hole has this special gift for getting out of the worst situations. He was often left for dead, shot, stabbed, beaten, tortured, drugged with everything you could think of… even plunging his car into a frozen waterfall. Despite everything, Harry always comes through, and here he is already in his thirteenth disheveled adventure.
This time, however, he only manages at the very last second to extricate himself from a sort of black hole that looks rather “definitive”. Soaked in despair and Jim Beam in a seedy Los Angeles motel where he has decided to drown himself once and for all in alcohol, Harry is “saved” at the last minute by an improbable woman: an old fallen actress in debt to her death. neck. The ex-Kripos agent suddenly regains consciousness when Lucille is kidnapped in front of him by a cartel and he understands that the only way to save her… is to return to Norway.
The case that awaits him is not easy. Harry’s former colleagues dig into the sordid murders of two young women; the few very rare clues left by the serial killer seem to point to a real estate tycoon. However, it is precisely to prove the innocence of this billionaire that Hole returned to Oslo at a high price… in order to cancel Lucille’s debt. Harry has only ten days to find the real culprit before the gangsters execute their hostage. From the start, he is suspicious of his sponsor, even if he does not believe him responsible for the series of murders, and he quickly puts together a rather astonishing team to help him solve the case. Things are happening even more quickly as the billionaire’s wife is soon also murdered. Run, Harry, run…
Jo Nesbø has fun here passing the torch of narration to various characters, including Harry, of course, but also to the killer himself. This is how we discover a disconcerting theory about a parasite resembling that of toxoplasmosis: the assassin “cultivates” it and impregnates his victims with it in order to make them willing sacrifices. Strange… However, being around this unhinged being opens up a whole new part of reality; the reader can thus grasp the indirect involvement of, say, the real estate tycoon and reframe the entire investigation, which becomes a rather twisted revenge story.
Harry and his team are moving quickly — he doesn’t really have a choice! — and now he discovers the link between the billionaire and the killer before cornering the latter and resolving the matter just in time. The whole affair is carried out at a crazy pace, with some rather easy but effective tricks which manage to sow doubt throughout. When Harry Hole manages to counter his demons, no one can resist him for long, not even black holes…