Where many Scandi-crime novelists show glimpses of the underside of their social-democratic homelands but provide at least a level of redemption by the end of the case, Norway's Jo Nesbø seems to prefer not to. His main series character Harry Hole, at least, is all-too-frequently exposed to the very worst that Oslo has to offer - and his personal life as a recovering alcoholic with a sister in long-term care with genetic disabilities doesn't seem to provide much hope either.
2005's The Redeemer (translated from the Norwegian Frelseren in 2009) picks up where the earlier The Devil's Star left off. Hole has exposed a gun-runner with ties to organised crime known as "The Prince" over the previous two novels, and while he has achieved a level of fame as a result, he remains unpopular with many of his colleagues. More to the point, his superior Bjarne Møller is leaving for a posting in Bergen, and Hole is acutely aware that it has often been Møller's intervention which has kept him on the force.
There is a fair bit of back-story here, and the Hole novels are certainly not ones to jump into "mid-stream". Until comparatively recently, though, this was the only way to do so, as Nesbø has suffered the fate of having his novels translated in the wrong order from Norwegian. It wasn't until 2012 and 2013 that the first two instalments of the story were available in English, despite their original publication in the last years of last century. As a result, new readers are strongly advised to begin with The Bat and work their way forwards - even if nothing else, the occasional references to Hole's investigations in Australia will make sense.
The Redeemer takes place in the lead-up to Christmas, which is evocatively described throughout the narrative. We begin with an impressive polyphonic sequence in which Hole investigates a suspected drug-related suicide, some of the key witnesses for the present investigation establish themselves anda mysterious hitman conducts his job in Paris, before moving on to Oslo as well.
In typically Nesbø style, Hole's investigation of the suicide begins in medias res, and there really isn't an awful lot explaining his leaps of intuition until he resolves the matter over the confusion of his partner, Jack Halvorsen. It does serve, though, as a good potted reminder of the unorthodox and occasionally dangerous methods that Hole uses, as well as providing an update on some of the other recurring characters in the series..
Things really kick off, though, as it becomes apparent that the other characters we met earlier are members of the Salvation Army performing Christmas carols on Egertorget in central Oslo. One of these performers is the one killed by our mysterious hitman, and so the investigation begins.
But that's not all. Due to an unexpected snowstorm, the hitman is forced to spend an extra night in Oslo, where he discovers that the performer he killed was the wrong man.
As a synopsis like that would indicate, this isn't the kind of novel which features an awful lot of rumination by any of the characters. There are some very effective vignettes of the hitman's memories of war-time Croatia (the title of the novel is drawn from his codename of mali spasitelj, "The Little Redeemer") and the brutality of that conflict, but most of what's going to happen here is high-speed chasing by the police and frantic attempts by the killer to stay one step ahead of the law, while attempting to do what he came for in the first place.
Taken purely as a pedal-to-the-metal thriller, The Redeemer misses the mark at times. There's a romantic subplot of sorts which doesn't add anything at all to the main action, and frankly features baffling motives for both parties, but viewing the novel purely in those terms is a mistake.
Hole realises early in the piece that this was a professional hit, rather than simply a one-off crime. He therefore needs to start piecing together the clues to work out who could possibly have wanted a young man in the Salvation Army dead - an answer which takes in everything from the religious morals of what is still quite a closed community through to shady property deals in the centre of the city.
Geographically, too, Hole needs to range between a meeting with Møller in Bergen and a brief trip to Zagreb as it becomes apparent that the killer hails from Croatia. This last, in typical Hole fashion, risks getting him in serious trouble with his new supervisor.
The eventual resolution of the tangled web here is delivered at a similarly high speed to the rest of the plot. While it ties up the loose ends, it does play slightly loosely with the reader, particularly as it deals with a key scene in which Halvorsen is attacked. It also seems slightly implausible for some of the issues of identity to have been ignored in the way that they are, particularly in the post-9/11 world.
To return to the topic of the back-story here, there is a final kicker in the "Prince" story-arc in the epilogue which I certainly didn't see coming. I won't say that it was a true blind-siding, though, as Nesbø's ability with story-arcs is uneven at best. Major events in the relationships between characters seem to take place between novels and are only hinted at, rather than explained fully. Even an element of the "Prince" investigation seems to have taken place in the space between novels, which is a shame as this had become quite an intriguing sub-plot.
Again, the point needs to be made that Nesbø's Norway is much darker even than Mankell's Sweden ever was. In George Martin-esque fashion, he's certainly not averse to killing central characters off, so never get attached to anyone in these novels. Additionally, he's also a fan of the course of action which Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot occasionally took, which is that of letting the criminal be "judged" naturally, rather than by the legal system. That happens here, in rather spectacular fashion.
While I can't recommend Nesbø to precisely the same audience as I would Mankell, I can certainly give him a very strong recommendation. Hole is a difficult character to appreciate, but well worth the effort.
Four stars.
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