Phantom: Book review

By tvnz.co.nz's Steph Zajkowski

Published: 4:18PM Tuesday February 07, 2012

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Give me a novel with a tall, enigmatic hero ( Jack Reacher) with a chip on his shoulder, an uncanny intuition when it comes to sniffing out baddies, a dogged determination to solve the unsolvable, and I am one happy reader.

Give me all of the above, throw a Scandinavian accent into the mix and I am HOOKED.

Having taken to my bed with depression when Swede Henning Mankell closed the final chapter on his doughty creation, Kurt Wallander, I perked up on discovering another cop with a score to settle was one teensy border crossing away.

Norwegian Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole has 'the magnetism of a loner, a hard-boiled sensitivity; an impossible character yet impossible not to like'.  

And so to Phantom, the ninth instalment in the Hole series.

A battle-weary Harry is back in Oslo after three years abroad in Hong Kong. His city has changed; there's a drug plague sweeping his old haunts.

As a young addict lies dying on the floor of an Oslo apartment, he begins to tell his story. Outside, the church bells toll.

Soon, Harry finds himself in the grip of a particularly disturbing case involving another serial killer who will stop at nothing to escape justice. But his solitary investigation brings him face to face with the boy's alleged killer and he is forced to confront his own history.

As Harry searches for the truth, this shapes up to be the first impossible case in his career.

This novel is dark; so much of the action is set at night or down rat-infested lanes, as an increasingly dishevelled and hard-bitten Harry confronts a city's underbelly.

Nesbo himself concludes that Harry 'has committed crimes himself and has become increasingly like the criminals he's hunting.'

There's no doubt that Jo Nesbo is the master of his genre. Long term fans will be shaken, shocked and stirred as events unfold on Oslo's dark streets. The final chapter is simply stunning. In short, Phantom is suspenseful, twisting and utterly fascinating.

Phantom by Jo Nesbo
Publisher: Random House NZ
RRP: $37.99
Available: Now

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