The Redbreast

Starred review from September 24, 2007
Shifting effortlessly between the last days of WWII on the Eastern front and modern day Oslo, Norwegian Nesbø (The Devil's Star
) spins a complex tale of murder, revenge and betrayal. A recovering alcoholic recently reassigned to the Norwegian Security Service, Insp. Harry Hole begins tracking Sverre Olsen, a vicious neo-Nazi who escaped prosecution on a technicality. But what starts as a quest to put Olsen behind bars soon explodes into a race to prevent an assassination. As Hole struggles to stay one step ahead of Olsen and his gang of skinheads, Nesbø takes the reader back to WWII, as Norwegians fighting for Hitler wage a losing battle on the Eastern front. When the two story lines finally collide, it's up to Hole to stop a man hell-bent on carrying out the deadly plan he hatched half a century ago in the trenches. Perfectly paced and painfully suspenseful, this crime novel illuminates not only Norway's alleged Nazi ties but also its present skinhead subculture. Readers will delight in Hole, a laconic hero as doggedly stubborn as Connelly's Harry Bosch, and yet with a prickly appeal all his own.

Starred review from November 15, 2007
Nesbo has been one of Norways leading crime-fiction authors for 10 years, and his American debut shows why. Moving from World War II to the last days of 1999 and into the new century, the novel unfurls a complex plot in which the wounds of history continue to bleed in the present. The hero, alcoholic Oslo detective Harry Hole, is still grieving the loss of a colleague in an incident that may have been his fault; he is shocked from his lethargy by a new case with tentacles stretching back to a band of Norwegian soldiers who fought for the Nazis against the Russians. History has made the Norwegian veterans pariahs, and long-simmering resentments have come to the surface, fueled by the emergence of a strengthening neo-Nazi movement in Norway. As Hole follows the trail back into the past, he finds himself forced to rethink commonly accepted assumptions about his country and his own life. The linking of past to present through alternating story lines is a common technique in crime fiction, but Nesbo uses it superbly here, with the two plots interacting dynamically and adding context to our understanding of the central theme in contemporary Scandinavian crime fiction: the rise of racism and hate crime in the postiron curtain era. But beyond that, Nesbo has a terrific feel for character, and Hole, while sharing characteristics with so many similarly melancholic modern cops (including, of course, Mankells Kurt Wallander), carves a place of distinction for himself in a crowded field.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 15, 2007
In the latest Scandinavian crime fiction import, award-winning and best-selling Norwegian author Nesbø introduces Detective Harry Hole. A talented, dedicated detective with drinking issues, Hole is nearly as depressed and grim as Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander but closer in age and style to Ake Edwardson's Erik Winter, occasionally sporting 1980s band T-shirts, always wearing black Doc Marten combat boots, and regularly referencing popular movies. After an unfortunate incident involving an American Secret Service agent, Hole is transferred to the political unit. Left to his own devices, he investigates the purported import of a Marklin (the world's best and most expensive rifle) while keeping an eye on a neo-Nazi ex-con who recently avoided jail. A lengthy and complex story with subplots involving an old man dying of cancer and flashbacks to World War II and the role of Norwegians who fought for Hitler on the eastern front; one of the more fascinating detectives in modern crime fiction; and a well-drawn, engaging set of secondary characters make this one of the best new series of 2007. Highly recommended for all libraries. [In 2004, Norwegian book clubs voted "The Redbreast" as the best Norwegian crime novel ever written; the second book in Nesbø's "Oslo" trilogy, "The Devil's Star", is available on Amazon UK.Ed.]Jessica E. Moyer, Coll. of Education & Human Development, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis

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