de Jo Nesbo
Shots ring out at a Salvation Army Christmas concert in Oslo, leaving one of the singers dead in the street. The trail will lead Harry Hole, Oslo’s best investigator and worst civil servant, deep into the darkest corners of the city and, eventually, to Croatia.
An assassin forged in the war-torn region has been brought to Oslo to settle an old debt. As the police circle in, the killer becomes increasingly desperate and the danger mounts for Harry and his colleagues.
Don't miss Jo Nesbo's latest Harry Hole thriller, Killing Moon!
Shots ring out at a Salvation Army Christmas concert in Oslo, leaving one of the singers dead in the street. The trail will lead Harry Hole, Oslo’s best investigator and worst civil servant, deep into the darkest corners of the city and, eventually, to Croatia.
An assassin forged in the war-torn region has been brought to Oslo to settle an old debt. As the police circle in, the killer becomes increasingly desperate and the danger mounts for Harry and his colleagues.
Don't miss Jo Nesbo's latest Harry Hole thriller, Killing Moon!
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Chapter One
part one
Advent
1
august 1991
The Stars
She was fourteen years old and sure that if she shut her eyes tight and concentrated she could see the stars through the roof.
All around her, women were breathing. Regular, heavy, nighttime breathing. One was snoring, and that was Auntie Sara, who had been given a mattress beneath the open window.
She closed her eyes and tried to breathe like the others. It was difficult to sleep, especially because everything around her was so new and different. The sounds of the night and the forest beyond the window in Østgård were different. The people she knew from the meetings in the citadel and the summer camps were somehow not the same. She was not the same, either. The face and body she saw in the mirror this summer were new. And her emotions, these strange hot and cold currents that flowed through her when the boys looked at her. Or when one of them in particular looked at her. Robert. He was different this year, too.
She opened her eyes again and stared. She knew God had the power to do great things, even allow her to see the stars through the roof. If it was His wish.
It had been a long and eventful day. The dry summer wind had whispered through the corn, and the leaves on the trees danced as if in a fever, causing the light to filter through to the visitors on the field. They had been listening to one of the Salvation Army cadets from the -officer—training school talking about his work as a preacher on the Faeroe Islands. He was -good—looking and spoke with great sensitivity and passion. But she was preoccupied with shooing away a bumblebee that kept buzzing around her head, and by the time it moved off, the heat had made her drowsy. When the cadet finished, all faces were turned to the territorial commander, David Eckhoff, who had been observing them with his smiling, young eyes, which were actually over fifty years old. He saluted in the Salvation Army manner, with his right hand raised above his shoulder and pointing to the kingdom of heaven, amid a resounding shout of “Hallelujah!” Then he prayed for the cadets’ work with the poor and the pariahs to be blessed, and reminded them of the Gospel of Matthew, where it said that Jesus the Redeemer was among them, a stranger on the street, maybe a criminal, without food and without clothing. And that on Judgment Day the righteous, those who had helped the weakest, would have eternal life. It had all the makings of a long speech, but then someone whispered something and he said, with a smile, that Youth Hour was next on the program and today it was Rikard Nilsen’s turn.
She had heard Rikard make his voice deeper than it was to thank the commander. As usual, he had prepared what he was going to say in writing and memorized it. He stood up and recited how he was going to devote his life to the fight, to Jesus’s fight for the kingdom of God. His voice was nervous, yet monotonous and soporific. His introverted glower rested on her. Her eyes were heavy. His sweaty top lip was moving to form the familiar, secure, tedious phrases. So she -didn’t react when the hand touched her back. Not until it became fingertips and they wandered down to the small of her back, and lower, and made her freeze beneath her thin summer dress.
She turned and looked into Robert’s smiling brown eyes. And she wished her skin were as dark as his so that he would not be able to see her blush.
“Shh,” Jon had said.
Robert and Jon were brothers. Although Jon was one year older, many people had taken...
Au sujet de l’auteur-
- JO NESBØ is a musician, songwriter, economist, and #1 New York Times best-selling author. He has won the Raymond Chandler Award for Lifetime Achievement as well as many other awards. His books have sold 55 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 50 languages. His Harry Hole novels include The Redeemer, The Snowman, The Leopard, Phantom, The Thirst, and most recently Knife, and he is also the author of The Son, Headhunters, Macbeth, The Kingdom and several children's books. He lives in Oslo.
Critiques-
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March 25, 2013
The first chapter of Nesbø’s highly suspenseful sixth Harry Hole thriller introduces 17-year-old Robert Karlsen and his year older brother, Jon, who in 1991 are cadets at a Salvation Army retreat in the Norwegian countryside, where a 14-year-old girl is sexually assaulted. In the next chapter, 22 years later, detective Hole is winding up the investigation of a drug-related murder in Oslo. The main action begins when a Serbian hit man, Cristo Stankic, shoots Robert on a crowded city street, though his intended target was Jon—and that’s when the pace really picks up. As the title suggests, the search for redemption is on—redemption through violence. The deeply flawed Hole is his familiar self: difficult and disrespectful, brilliant and intuitive. At times the book feels padded with lengthy asides and banter, but the primary narrative, told in powerful prose, never fails to grip. Series fans should note that later entries have already appeared in the U.S., most recently Phantom (2012). Announced first printing of 150,000. -
Starred review from March 15, 2013
Rarely does a mystery novel succeed on so many levels, as the intricate plotting explores psychological and theological dimensions that go deeper than standard notions of good and evil. As a literary stylist as well as a master of mystery, Nesbo (Phantom, 2012, etc.) has established himself as the king of Scandinavian crime fiction, a genre that became an international sensation in the wake of the posthumous success of Stieg Larrson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and its sequels and film adaptations). Yet, tracing the publishing trail of Nesbo and his series featuring the intuitive alcoholic Harry Hole requires some detective work of its own. This is actually the novel that precedes The Snowman (2011), the work that launched Nesbo internationally as a best-selling author, and the sixth Harry Hole novel overall (the first two have yet to be published in the United States). It may also be the best, or at least the richest, in its evocation of a sinister plot involving the Salvation Army during the Oslo Christmas season. The rape of one Salvation Army teen by another sows the seeds for all the complications that follow, yet it takes most of the novel for the reader to be certain of the identities of the rapist and victim, as the very notion of identity defies easy resolution throughout. With its themes of forgiveness and redemption, and the difference between the two, the novel presents every one of its characters as a flawed human being, unable to separate into categories of good guys and bad guys. In fact, the title character is a shadowy contract murderer, and redemption also serves as a euphemism for a junkie's fix. As one initially peripheral character who proves crucial tells Hole, "You've discovered that guilt is not as black-and-white as you thought when you decided to become a policeman and redeem humankind from evil. As a rule there's little evil but a lot of human frailty. Many sad stories you can recognize in yourself." Ultimately, a story with a lot of pieces to its puzzle hurtles toward a climax that is not merely sad, but tragic. Perhaps not the best novel for a Nesbo initiate, but those with an affinity for the darkest and most literary crime fiction will want to get here as soon as they can.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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May 1, 2013
Do not expect this book to continue the story line from Nesbo's 2012 best seller, The Phantom (ninth in the Harry Hole series.) Fans will have to wait longer to discover the fate of Harry after his shocking encounter with a murder suspect. Instead, this story, published three years and as many books earlier (2009) involves the murder of a young Salvation Army employee shot at point-blank range during a Christmas season street performance. Bad weather grounds the gunman in Oslo and gives him time to realize, after reading news reports, that he has killed the wrong man. Excellent plotting, lots of twists, deception, and a comprehensible villain contribute to the rapid pacing as the iconic Nordic detective and his colleagues race to find and stop the assassin before he kills again. This could almost be considered a police procedural except that Hole rarely follows procedure even when commanded to do so by his new supervisor. VERDICT Recommended for the many fans of Nesbo as well as for readers who appreciate maverick, intuitive detectives who fight the system almost as often as they fight crime.--Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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May 1, 2013
Nesb's Harry Hole novels have not appeared in the U.S. in the order in which they were written, and given the stunning events detailed in Phantom (2012), that disjointed chronology may prove disconcerting for readers of The Redeemer. Still, it is a fine crime novel. Redemption of one kind or another has always been on Harry's mind (his preferred method for finding it is usually in a whiskey bottle), but here the theme encompasses nearly every character in the book, from various Salvation Army soldiers with multiple secrets in their closets, through an assassin hired to kill one of those soldiers, and on to Harry's former boss, Mller. The freezing Oslo winter nicely parallels the icy righteousness ( the virtue of the lazy and the visionless ) that drives most of these would-be redeemers. The thin line separating crooks and cops in all of the intensely character-focused Hole novels has never been thinner or more treacherous than it is here. As Mller puts it, It's chance and nuance that separate the hero from the villain. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Nesb's books have sold 15 million copies in 47 languages. A 150,000 first printing will get his latest U.S. release off and running.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.) -
July 29, 2013
This sixth installment in Nesbø’s popular series finds Harry Hole, Oslo’s most successful and least collaborative police investigator, spending the Christmas season trying to unravel a knotty murder case while bemoaning the loss of a friendly superior and working around the demands of the strong-willed new boss. The novel alternates between Harry’s sleuthing and a Croatian assassin’s attempt to evade him long enough to escape the city. John Lee selects a properly surly and world-weary voice for Harry, and an accented, desperate one for the killer known as “the little redeemer.” Since the book travels through various strata of Oslo society and even includes a side trip to the former Yugoslavia, Lee is given ample opportunity to display a panoply of Norwegian and Croatian accents. He uses his own rich British accent to guide us smoothly through the novel’s descriptive passages. Since the author packs his fast-paced scenes with crucial details easily missed, Lee’s clear, crisp rendition is a blessing. However, several shifts between Harry’s sections and those of the little redeemer are so abrupt—narrated by that same well-modulated voice—it may take listeners a moment to realize whose story is being told. A Knopf hardcover. - The New York Times Book Review "Fast-and-furious."
- San Antonio Express-News "The pace is relentless. . . . The plot . . . [is] complex without becoming overheated."
- Minneapolis Star Tribune "Though there's plenty of twisty plot, it's Nesbø's writing--textured, humane, evocative, moody, cinematic--that keeps this thing rolling forward like a toboggan on a steep slope."
- Michael Connelly "The Redeemer rocks! Jo Nesbø is my new favorite thriller writer and Harry Hole my new hero. This book had my pulse in the red zone from start to finish."
- The Wall Street Journal "Full of shocking chance and nuance, unforeseen twists and ice-crystal clear views of Oslo in winter."
- The Globe and Mail (Canada) "A tour de force. . . . So tightly constructed and compelling that it's impossible to put the book down."
- Time Out "A treat. . . . Even when you're positive that the mystery is entirely done and dusted, it invariably turns out that the pragmatic Detective Harry Hole has managed to stay three steps ahead, and there's more to uncover."
- The Sunday Telegraph "Nesbø is no ordinary writer. . . . A complex story, impossible to second-guess, which proves that greed, lust and a desire for revenge lurk within the saintliest of folk."
- Publishers Weekly "The search for redemption is on--redemption through violence. The deeply flawed Hole is his familiar self: difficult and disrespectful, brilliant and intuitive. . . . Told in powerful prose, [The Redeemer] never fails to grip."
- Booklist "No doubt about it: Nesbø belongs on every crime-fiction fan's A-list."
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