Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The Serious Fraud Office exists in many countries. Eg here's the British one:
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Cool. I thought that had just been a quaint translation of whatever the Norwegian name for it was.
Financial crimes like that just seem to go to the RCMP or the Auditor General's Office in Canada, depending on who's involved. It doesn't get a special division name, AFAIK.
Made the walk to the local library branch which lo and behold, turned out to have all of
Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole series which I'd been "missing" from my omnibus purchases.
Accordingly, the first I read was
Police, 10th and thus far latest in the series, in order to find out what happened after the end of #9
Phantom.
NB: If you are thinking of picking up the series or have not already read through #9, DO NOT so much as skim any kind of opening sample for #10, as the prologue completely spoilers everything significant that happened in #9, as well as telling you who was behind it.
At first I wondered why Nesbø didn't simply start with his usual cold open of finding "another year, another dead body", as the Amelia Peabody books would put it, and not bothering to recap anything at all for the Gentle Reader who skipped a book/forgot what happened last time, only vaguely alluding to previous installments now and then. But now I suspect it's so he can cause the maximum chaos and confusion to reader expectations going into this one.
The ostensible case is that someone is targeting former police officers who've worked on cases where they failed to catch previous killers and this puts a number of characters we've managed to get acquainted with over the course of the series at risk.
In addition to this, some fallout from the events of the previous book is still ongoing, with additional maneuvring and plotting to cover things up.
And you can probably guess upon whose person it all intersects. It's like that RL guy who had a documentary made about him because he kept being struck by lightning again and again.
It all becomes very typical Nesbø, as he indulges his decided love for multiple fake-out danger moments*, suspected hidden identities, conveniently-appearing dubious connections/behaviour which imply guilt on the part of persons who may not actually appear guilty (at least not of that particular crime), enabling the mistaken belief that one is on the trail of the right person when actually they're not, thrilling sneaking around/chase scenes on the desperate trail to collect overlooked/illegal evidence which turns out to not be helpful after all, etc., to an even higher degree than I've seen him do it in the past.
This is a pretty straightforward making-and-wrapping-up-the-connections kind of thriller, with what seems to be a good deal less of the reflectiveness and thematic depth of a few of the past installments in the Hole series. There's an ongoing crime (well, several of them), and it eventually gets chased down and (mostly) solved, at some cost yet to be determined, as several loose ends are left ambiguously hinted at, and that's pretty much it for this episode; To Be Continued…
That said, you do get a good deal of catch-up on what's been happening with the characters you've gotten to know over the course of the series, and there are several important interpersonal developments which will likely have ramifications if and when the next book in the series gets written.
Medium recommend if you've been following the series. A typically-handled sort of case for the Oslo Police in this one; nothing really outstanding in the idea or execution, but kind of a comfort‡ read follow-up to the series to date. And like me, you'll probably be rather curious as to what happened after some of the surprises in #9.
* And by the way, thanks for making me think that a half-dozen or so sympathetic characters were going to/already had died horribly when they didn't, and then actually killing off some I'd grown to really like instead of one of the other ones you could have conveniently gotten rid of instead. Why do all the authors I read almost always† do the latter?
Eh, I suppose we're getting the same lesson that Harry receives with each book: don't get too attached, they're probably a crazed killer or future victim and it's just going to turn out badly.
† Clearly my favour confers DOOOOOM. And backdated DOOOOOM at that.
‡ Except for the bits where it killed off characters I really liked and had been looking forward to seeing more of.
Oh well, I guess I still have 3 more unread earlier Hole books that they might have made appearances in.