Finished
Jo Nesbø's
The Redeemer, 6th in his Harry Hole, Dysfunctional Yet Brilliant Norwegian Sometimes-Inspector series, which also brings me to the end of it, at least in terms of my now having read all the books slightly out of order.
It was bit weird to have this as the missing link between the two omnibuses which I'd purchased and previously read, as I'd known going in a little about certain broad character fates which were alluded to in the further novels, and was waiting for those occurrences to happen, but when they did, the actual events and their outcomes unfolded in ways I wasn't expecting.
Anyway, this was a very good standalone bridge case between the "Oslo Trilogy" of #3-5 and the Snowman fallout of #7-9. It followed up in a way on the major repercussions of #5, while laying groundwork for #7 in such a way that probably readers who do the entire series in order were pretty surprised at outcomes of certain setups when they finally occurred.
As for this book's own case, it was both very ambiguous and very clever, inverting the series' usual convention of hiding the killer's identity and motive with a taunting 1st person perspective of their unclueful inner monologue, by making it clear upfront who the shooter was after and how they were approaching the target despite the police attempts at protection, while instead shifting the mystery of the crime to who was ultimately behind it and why would they even bother, given the apparent lack of motivation towards that particular person.
There wasn't all that much in the way of character development or thematic resonance in this particular installment compared to certain other books in the series, but we're kind of compensated for that by a decided glimpse into other things in Harry's world, such as the Salvation Army* in Norway, and how certain types of imported workers for hire operate, and the 101 Things A Policeman Can Do, officially or otherwise, to try and catch a killer.
Highly recommended. This is both a good installment to the series which slots well between the two mini-arcs, and a well-done police procedural in its own right. I'd have to say that it just barely knocks #8
The Leopard off the 2nd best Nesbø Hole book spot I'd
given it previously.
* It was rather odd to see so much overtly religious content in a Nordic novel, although I've read that Norway does have the highest public religious observance of the Scandinavian† countries. But it's still extremely low compared to, say, England.
† The difference between Scandinavia and the rest of the Nordic countries is best summed up in
this cartoon, which provides the most succinct and easy-to-understand explanation of it which I have ever seen.