Carrying on almost directly from its predecessor Phantom, 2013's Police (published in Norwegian in the same year as Politi) sees the Oslo crime squad investigating yet another baffling series of murders.
This time, as a very atmospheric prologue shows us, the victims are themselves policemen. It gradually emerges that they're being killed at the scenes of unsolved murders that they themselves had helped to investigate. Once again, it seems that a serial killer is stalking the streets of the Norwegian capital, and this one has a thoroughly unusual motive.
But where in all of this is Harry Hole? Things were left on a knife-edge at the end of Phantom, and it seems that Hole may not be able to assist his colleagues in the same way as he had previously done. The tall man under guard in the hospital may - or may not - be precisely who we think he is. Will Hole's colleagues, including Katrine Bratt who joins the team from Bergen, be able to unravel this incredibly complicated series of crimes?
Police is Jo Nesbø, if not at his finest, certainly at his most complex. Even as the plot spirals towards its dramatic conclusion, there are two or three more suspects introduced who are at least plausible killers. There's mental illness, and mental illness suffered by at least three important characters no less. There's even a strong implication that one of Hole's colleagues is killed by a separate killer, which is a plot thread I rather hope is examined in a later novel.
Oh, and the police corruption hinted at in Phantom is front and centre by now. The odious Mikael Bellman seems intent on cementing his position as the Oslo chief of police, but this may have to come at the expense of his doggedly-loyal underling Truls Berntsen who has been suspended from the police over some suspicious payments he's received. There's less of a focus on Berntsen in this novel, but I get the strong sense that Nesbø really enjoys writing such a thoroughly objectionable character.
There's a fair bit of gore involved, too. Some of the deaths involved are pretty cinematic in their execution, and a few of the investigating officers find it all too dramatic as well.
Does it all work? Well, it's hard to give a definitive answer without giving too much of the plot away. What I can say is that Nesbø is just about able to keep all the balls in the air most of the time.
There are a few scenes (even the final chapter) which rely on the sneaky technique of setting the reader up to think they're watching one thing, only for it to be something completely different in reality. That's a relatively common trope in Nesbø's writing, and I can hardly begrudge him falling back on what he knows best, but when you can point to perhaps five instances in which it's used in a 600-odd page novel, perhaps that's a bit unfortunate.
It's also clear to see why Nesbø keeps attempting to write Hole and his team out of existence. This is a novel which goes to some pretty dark places and hints at even darker ones to come. Writing something like that every couple of years would take it out of many people.
A 3.5-star rating here. There may just have been too much going on for this to work perfectly.
