Police: A Harry Hole Novel (Harry Hole Series) Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 15, 2013

Police is #10 in Nesbø's wonderful Harry Hole series, and by golly, it's a winner. I have read all but Cockroaches from this series, but I don't know whether or not my guts have ever been so delightfully twisted while reading any Nesbø novel prior to this one. The suspense tempted me so many times to turn to the end, but to my credit, I didn't cheat.From the very outset, the author delights in playing with your head. In a guarded hospital room, a man is laying in a coma. While he's hovering between life and death, someone is luring members of the Oslo police force to their deaths. The victims seem to be connected to old, unsolved cases, and they die in extremely terrible ways on or near the anniversaries of the crimes. Harry's old friends on the Oslo police force are stymied ... there is very little in the way of clues or forensics left behind, and the police are under a great deal of pressure to do something about these murders before any more policemen get killed. They're also under pressure from Harry's nemesis Mikael Bellman, the current police chief, to get the cases solved because he has ambitions, and taking credit for solving these murders will help him move up the political ladder. The team goes behind Bellman's back to try to stop the killer from striking again, but things get really ugly when when a particularly brutal murder hits very close to home.Around this central plot, which ultimately focuses on the search for justice, there's much more going on. A particularly nasty suspect gives the police a run for its money; police burner Truls Berntsen and his crony Mikael Bellman are up to their old dirty tricks once more and through it all, things get really twisty as the book comes to a startling conclusion. I swear -- for once it was me, rather than the characters, who became angst ridden over how this was all going to play out -- my insides were churning waiting to see a) who the killer was and why he/she did what he/she did and b) how much nastier Bellman and Berntsen could possibly get while continuing to manipulate things behind the scenes. And through it all, I was kept wondering and guessing.I don't care what anyone else says, I LOVED this book! This one just might be my favorite of the entire series. It is twisty and turny, frightening and unrelenting in the tension it managed to produce in my insides, and it is truly Nesbø at his writing best. If you're new to the most excellent work of Jo Nesbø you may wish to start at the very beginning and make your way forward through the series, as each book builds on what comes before; if you don't want to take that much time, at least read the novel prior to this one, Phantom. Highly, highly recommended!

I have enjoyed Jo Nesbo novel's and did enjoy this one. But I need to say up front that I was frustrated with how long it took Nesbo to bring Harry Hole into the novel. It says it is a Harry Hole novel, but you are two hundred pages into it before Harry makes an appearance, at least it felt that long. The beginning of the book dragged. It took way to long to develop the situation that was going to be solved. I almost set the book aside, but I remembered how much I like Harry Hole novels so I kept going.I'm glad I did. The book started to pick up speed. The plots started to thicken and there were several of them. It was an exciting read that kept me wanting to know how it was going to end.There is someone killing police officers. That person is killing them at the scenes of previous murders that wen't unsolved. The murders are brutal. The person is bludgeoned almost beyond recognition and then killed.There is a new "young" police chief. He is not quite experienced enough to handle this, but since there is no Harry Hole he is doing the best he can.Harry's friends start to meet in the boiler room of their precinct so that they can form an unofficial task force. They want to bring back their psychologist friend as well as Harry, but how can they do that?To go along with this plot is another, a serial rapists is brutally murdered in prison, or is he? Does he have something to do with this crime spree? Is he even alive?Then there is the police academy and a young girl there who seems overly obsessed with the police murders and serial killers in particular. As the story unwinds she might have more to do with the murders than anyone can imagine.All three plots or is it four plots, as we have the unsolved murder of a drug trafficker in here as well, come together towards the end of the book to start tying things up. But frankly we don't know exactly how everything is going to end until the last page, and then it doesn't really end, does it?The book was fun, just slow to get going. If you get bored at the beginning don't put it down. Keep in mind the little things that are mentioned that don't appear to have much significance because they will come back to add to the story in the long run.Oh, and did I mention that there are several love stories running throughout the book? Yup, four love stories to hold more interest.Enjoy!

Nesbo is a talented writer. This story is too long but it all comes together. Harry Hole is a Fantastic Character and the killer in this Novel is Bizarre.