The thirst

Review by New York Times Review

THERE'S NO POINT WAITING for Denise Mina's two dependable series sleuths, Alex Morrow and Paddy Meehan, to appear in THE LONG DROP (Little, Brown, $26), which is a drastic departure from her brilliant contemporary studies of criminals who prey on Glasgow's social underclass. This new novel takes its story from the Burnside murders, a true crime spree that horrified the city in the late 1950s. William Watt, the owner of a string of bakery shops, is innocent of the murder of his wife, his sister-in-law and his daughter, but although the police can't prove otherwise, they're convinced of his guilt. So Watt sets out to convince them that the real killer is Peter Manuel by - wait for it! - taking him out on a bender and jollying him into a confession. Mina has always been a close observer of the brutality drunkards can inflict on their wives and children ("Between lunchtime closing and the pubs reopening for the evening, Glasgow is carpeted with drunk men. They loll on pavements," wet themselves at bus stops, "fight invisible foes in the streets"). But she also feels for women like Manuel's mother, Brigit ("My knees are broken with praying for you"), and the father of a murdered girl who describes her in the blandest of terms on the witness stand because he can't bring himself to share his memories of the "real daughter" the public knows only as a mangled corpse. Mina even holds out her hand to those inarticulate thugs whose violent acts are a perverse way of validating their own lives. " 'You can't tell a story,'" Watt says, dismissing his companion's veiled threat over the course of their wild night, "not knowing that this is cutting Manuel to the bone." With one plotline continually hopscotching over the other, Mina manages to keep two narratives going at once: the farcical account of Watt and Manuel's binge and the sober courtroom drama of dueling life-or-death stories when Manuel faces a jury. Despite the novel's final reassurance that it's "just a story. Just a creepy story about a serial killer," this one feels painfully real. JO NESBO CERTAINLY has the magic touch when it comes to psycho serial killers. In THE THIRST (Knopf, $26.95), breathlessly translated by Neil Smith, the gloomy Norwegian novelist introduces a monster who stalks his victims on Tinder, rips out their throats with lethal dentures made of metal spikes and drinks their blood. When the killing starts, summer is over, with all its "hysterical, cheerful, stupid selfexpression," and Oslo has resumed its true character, "melancholic, reserved, efficient." That also describes Nesbo's protagonist, Harry Hole, "possibly the best, possibly the worst, but certainly the most mythologized murder detective" on the city's police force. Something about the killer's bizarre M.O. strikes a memory chord with Harry, and at the scene of the second killing he gets down to work, scrutinizing the bloody evidence, reading the clues the madman has leftfor the police and coming to the unnerving conclusion that "he wants to play." At this chilling point, teams of investigators are dispatched and the good citizens of Oslo are paralyzed with fear. But much of this melodrama is only a distraction from the intricate plotting that keeps the story shifting under our feet. Nesbo is a master at this narrative sleight of hand, and if you can stand the gory details and hang on during the switchback turns, the payoffis its own reward. ONE WAY TO DELIVER a message in the unsettled political climate of 1919 Calcutta is to stuffit in the mouth of a murdered man. "English blood will run in the streets," warns the note in Abir Mukherjee's enthralling debut novel, A RISING MAN (Pegasus, $25.95). "Quit India!" Lord Charles Taggart, the police commissioner, assigns the case to Capt. Sam Wyndham, newly arrived from England with lingering war wounds and a morphine habit but a keen appreciation for the "vibrant, wretched beauty" of the slums of Calcutta. The investigation sends Wyndham and his Bengali assistant on a whirlwind circuit of the city. On his way to uncovering "a fully fledged terrorist campaign" against the Raj, Capt. Wyndham is educated in the ways that 150,000 Britons have managed to maintain mastery over millions of Indians. LOVE AND DEATH IN BURGUNDY (Minotaur, $24.99), Susan C. Shea's novel set in the French countryside, offers a pleasant getaway from hard-core killers. Reignysur- Canne is an unspoiled village with only a crumbling castle to recommend it to tourists. Katherine Goff, an American artist of modest reputation and a likable enough amateur sleuth, has acquired an eclectic group of friends and potential murder victims (including a rich, rude American I'd like to murder myself). There are local fetes, excursions to colorful flea markets and the odd interesting character like Jeannette, a 14-year-old thief with personality. That might be enough for a respectable cozy mystery. Even so, this feels like something you've read before - the same characters, the same fetes, even the same recycled scenery. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 3, 2017]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Somehow it had to happen: Harry Hole up against a vampire. Don't panic. Nesbø's internationally best-selling crime-fiction series, while often intensely horrific, has always remained unfailingly realistic, and so it is here, in this eleventh installment. Not a genre mash-up, then, but a gripping, way-scary crime novel in which former Oslo police detective Hole, now teaching at Norway's police college, is called back to active duty to track down a vampirist, that is, a person who craves blood and exhibits behavior similar to that expected of a vampire. Harry has battled some cunningly evil serial killers in the past, but this is the first to employ a specially designed set of black dentures that make it possible to kill with a perfectly placed vampiric bite. Different, yes, but there's something about this killer, who targets victims on Tinder, that reminds Harry of his nemesis, the one who got away. Could it be? As in previous Hole novels, Nesbø moves his narration around a bit, putting us into the nightmarish mind of the killer without revealing his or her identity. And, of course, this being a novel about the most demon-wracked hero in crime fiction, Harry has troubles of his own, including a mysterious disease that has felled his wife, Rakel, and, yes, another tussle with Harry's longtime sparring partner, Jim Beam. In the end, it's all about thirst the vampirist's for blood, of course, but also Harry's for booze and for the thrill of the chase. Vampires don't exist, we all know that, but thirst is very real indeed, bringing together hunter and hunted. This one will keep readers awake deep into the night.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Actor Lee delivers an excellent, nuanced performance in this audio edition of the latest installment of Nesbo's Harry Hole series. As the book opens, former detective Hole is an instructor at a police college in Oslo, but he's quickly drawn in to the hunt for a serial killer who may be a figure from his past. In this, Hole's 11th outing, Nesbo again keeps the prose lean and the pace taut. Lee gives a distinctive voice and accent to each of the novel's many characters, yet even while successfully differentiating this large ensemble, he manages to conceal the identity of a villain whose voice is heard midway through the novel. And when that same villain's nose is broken later in the book, he skillfully adds a subtle but discernible nasal twinge. As Hole and his ragtag team of investigators close in on their target, the veteran voice actor ratchets up the tension. Lee's suave English brogue is a perfect match for the gritty material and the many Briticisms of the translation. A Knopf hardcover. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

A murderer who drinks victims' blood after rending them with iron teeth is slaughtering women in Oslo. Legendary homicide inspector Harry Hole, now a comfy private citizen and police college lecturer, is persuaded to help apprehend this fiend. Acting as a shadow detective with his own handpicked investigative team, Harry detects signatures in the vampirist's modus operandi pointing to the only killer who ever evaded him: Valentin Gjertsen. Although peopled with familiar series characters, this latest Harry Hole thriller recaps enough background to stand alone. The commanding diction of British actor John Lee propels the listener at a pace that unfurls Nesbo's cinematographic prose into the theater of the mind. When Lee channels a villain, listeners are tempted to check under the bed. -VERDICT Nesbo's mastery of plot and suspense will leave fans and police procedural/thriller aficionados more than satisfied. ["Features thoroughly developed characters, an intricate plot, and suspenseful twists, all hallmarks of a master storyteller": LJ 5/1/17 starred review of the Knopf hc.]-Judith -Robinson, Univ. at Buffalo © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Retired Inspector Harry Hole, who thinks he's safe from his demons as an underpaid lecturer in Oslo's Police College, gets blackmailed into returning to the Crime Squad Unit, with predictably explosive results.Do vampires exist? Maybe not, but vampirists, in academic expert Hallstein Smith's suitably pedantic distinction, certainly do, and one of them is at work in Oslo. After meeting Elise Hermansen, an attorney specializing in rape cases, on Tinder, he's evidently bitten her to death with a formidable set of iron teeth and drunk her blood. Given the remarkable absence of useful forensic evidence and the tenuous connection between the killer and his victim, one-eyed Police Chief Mikael Bellman, eager to burnish his crime-fighting credentials in support of his nomination as Minister of Justice, wants Harry Hole (Police, 2013, etc.) on the case, and he's willing to threaten legal proceedings against Police College student Oleg Fauke, who just happens to be Harry's stepson, to make it happen. Meanwhile, the killer has not been idle. Instead of letting a discreet interval elapse between his outrages, he attacks a second victim, concocts a smoothie from her blood and some lemon, and leaves a signature V on her door. More victims will follow in short order, and the case will continue to grow darker and more complex, even after Harry focuses the Crime Squad's manhunt on Valentin Gjertsen, who escaped from Ila Prison four years ago. In fact, Nesb, borrowing a page from Jeffery Deaver, piles on so many twists within twists within twists that even the most conscientious readers may end up puzzled about every circumstance of the killings except the pervasive and powerfully evoked evil behind them. Middling for this distinguished series: yet more evidence of why Scandinavian crime writers continue to dominate international bestseller lists. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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  Prologue   He stared into the white nothingness.    The way he had done for almost three years.    No one saw him, and he saw no one. Apart from each time the door opened and enough steam was sucked out for him to be able to glimpse a naked man for a brief moment before the door closed and everything was shrouded in fog.    The baths would be closing soon. He was alone.    He wrapped the white towelling bathrobe more tightly around him, got up from the wooden bench and walked out, past the empty swimming pool and into the changing room.    No trickling showers, no conversations in Turkish, no bare feet padding across the tiled floor. He looked at himself in the mirror. Ran a finger along the scar that was still visible after the last operation. It had taken him time to get used to his new face. His finger carried on down his throat, across his chest, and came to a halt at the start of the tattoo.    He removed the padlock from his locker, pulled on his trousers and put his coat on over the still damp bathrobe. Tied his shoelaces. He made sure he was definitely alone before going over to a locker with a coded padlock, one with a splash of blue paint on it. He turned the lock until it read 0999. Removed the lock and opened the door. Took a moment to admire the big, beautiful revolver that lay inside before taking hold of the red hilt and putting it in his coat pocket. Then he removed the envelope and opened it. A key. An address, and some more detailed information.    There was one more thing in the locker.    Painted black, made of iron.    He held it up against the light with one hand, looking at the wrought ironwork with fascination.    He would have to clean it, scrub it, but he already felt aroused at the thought of using it.    Three years. Three years in a white nothingness, in a desert of empty days.    Now it was time. Time he drank from the well of life again.    Time he returned.    Harry woke with a start. Stared out at the semi-darkness of the bedroom. It was him again, he was back, he was here.    "Nightmare, darling?" The whispered voice by his side was warm and soothing.    He turned towards her. Her brown eyes studied his. And the apparition faded and disappeared.    "I'm here," Rakel said.    "And here I am," he said.    "Who was it this time?"    "No one," he lied, and touched her cheek. "Go back to sleep."    Harry closed his eyes. Waited until he was sure she had closed hers before opening his again. He studied her face. He had seen him in a forest this time. Moorland, wreathed in white fog that swirled around them. He had raised his hand and pointed something towards Harry. He could just make out the demonic, tattooed face on his naked chest. Then the fog had grown thicker, and he was gone. Gone again.    "And here I am," Harry Hole whispered.      Chapter One   Elise walked down Thorvald Meyers gate, past plain four-storey buildings that had once housed the working classes in a poor part of a poor city, but where one square metre now cost as much as in London or Stockholm. September in Oslo. The darkness was back at last, and the drawn-out, annoyingly light summer nights were long gone, with all the hysterical, cheerful, stupid self-expression of summer. In September Oslo reverted to its true self: melancholic, reserved, efficient. A solid facade, but not without its dark corners and secrets. Much like her, apparently. She quickened her pace; there was rain in the air, mist, the spray when God sneezed, as one of her dates had put it in an attempt to be poetic. She was going to give up Tinder. Tomorrow. Enough was enough. Enough randy men whose way of looking at her made her feel like a whore when she met them in bars. Enough crazy psychopaths and stalkers who stuck like mud, sucking time, energy and security from her. Enough pathetic losers who made her feel like she was one of them.    They said Internet dating was the cool way to meet new people, that it was nothing to be ashamed of anymore, that everyone was doing it. But that wasn't true. People met each other at work, in classrooms, through friends, at the gym, in cafes, on planes, buses, trains. They met each other the way they were supposed to meet each other, when they were relaxed, no pressure, and afterwards they could cling to the romantic illusion of innocence, purity and quirks of fate. She wanted that illusion. She was going to delete her profile. She'd told herself that before, but this time it was definitely going to happen, that very night.    She crossed Sofienberggata and fished out the key to unlock the gate next to the greengrocer's. She pushed the gate open and stepped into the darkness of the archway. And stopped dead.    There were two of them.    It took a moment or two for her eyes to get used to the darkness, and for her to see what they were holding in their hands. Both men had undone their trousers and had their cocks out.    She jerked back. Didn't look round, just prayed that there was no one standing behind her.    "Fucksorry." The combination of oath and apology was uttered by a young voice. Nineteen, twenty, Elise guessed. Not sober.    "Duh," the other one said, "you're pissing all over my shoes!"    "I was startled!"    Elise pulled her coat more tightly around her and walked past the young men, who had turned back to face the wall again. "This isn't a public toilet," she said.   "Sorry, we were desperate. It won't happen again."   ...     Ping.    A match on Tinder.    The triumphant sound your phone makes when someone you've already swiped right on swipes your picture right as well.    Elise's head was spinning, her heart was racing.    She knew it was the familiar response to the sound of Tinder's matchmaking: increased heart rate as a consequence of excitement. That it released a whole load of happy chemicals that you could become addicted to. But that wasn't why her heart was galloping. It was because the ping hadn't come from her phone.    But the ping had rung out at the very moment she'd swiped right on a picture. The picture of a person who, according to Tinder, was less than a kilometre away from her.    She stared at the closed bedroom door. Swallowed.    The sound must have come from one of the neighbouring apartments. There were lots of single people living in the block, lots of potential Tinder users. And everything was quiet now, even on the floor below where the girls had been having a party when she went out earlier that evening. But there was only one way to get rid of imaginary monsters. By checking.    Elise got up from the sofa and walked the four steps over to the bedroom door. Hesitated. A couple of assault cases from work swirled through her head.    Then she pulled herself together and opened the door.    She found herself standing in the doorway gasping for air. Because there wasn't any. None that she could breathe.    The light above the bed was switched on, and the first thing she saw was the soles of a pair of cowboy boots sticking off the end of the bed. Jeans and a pair of long legs, crossed. The man lying there was like the photograph, half in darkness, half out of focus. But he had unbuttoned his shirt to reveal his bare chest. And on his chest was a drawing or a tattoo of a face. That was what caught her eye now. The silently screaming face. As if it were held tight and was trying to pull free. Elise couldn't bring herself to scream either. Excerpted from The Thirst by Jo Nesbø All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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