Phantom
Jo Nesbo
Knopf
Hardcover
400 pages
October 2012
After his last case--the pursuit of the serial killer The Snowman--Harry Hole's life has changed. He
has left the police force in Oslo and moved to Hong Kong to pursue a new life and try to escape the demons that
haunt his dreams. But plans often don't work out as one wants, and Harry's plans aren't working out, either.
Harry
is drawn back to Oslo when news arrives that Oleg, the boy he raised as a son,
has been arrested for murder. The victim? Oleg's best friend and partner in crime and addiction, Gusto.
Both young men had become addicted to violin, the synthetic heroin that has overtaken the Oslo drug scene. They soon turn to selling the drug to support their habits, and now Gusto is dead and Oleg fits the mold as the killer. But Harry is
unable to reconcile the young boy he loved and helped raise with a cold-blooded killer and drug addict.
Harry isn't a policeman anymore, but that hardly seems to matter. His old friends on the force and in various jobs throughout the city
are still willing to help him. Soon Harry has peeled away the skin of the setup Oleg has been fitted with. He is deep in the search for the men who brought violin to Oslo, and those in the government and perhaps the police
force who have joined with the drug dealers rather than stopping them.
Fans of Nesbo's series will not be disappointed in this effort, and those who are reading the series for the first time will be enthralled. Harry is definitely not the average policeman, but there is no one better at determining the truth than this deeply flawed man. The plot becomes increasingly tense as the
story progresses, and the reader will find themselves putting the book down periodically just to take a break from the tension. This is recommended for mystery lovers who will be thrilled to read of another Harry Hole investigation.