Mum: FTW means “for the win.”
Everyone else: Struggling to read and concentrate? Yeah, me too. But not so with this super absorbing, super ridiculous murder mystery by Jo Nesbo. Having not read anything by them before, I didn’t realize I was dropping into book five of an established series, though I figured it out quickly (because I am So Smart) with references to past cases and dead partners, but WHATEVER, the narrative doesn’t at all depend on knowing these past instalments. I would say, though, that after I finished it and decided to read some more that I felt I knew a sufficient amount about our protagonist detective, Harry, that I didn’t want to read the first four novels, but would instead carry on with the series with book six. Which HAPPY DAY my library carries in electronic format. (Which SAD DAY means that reading on my screen equals I’m 6000x more likely to end up shopping on Amazon which is what I spend Way Too Much Time doing every day anyway.)
Anyway, on to the substance of the book. I don’t really know what to tell you without telling you important details. I guess it’s important to know that Harry is a super smart detective with a troubled past and personal struggles aka: the ideal and archetypal Man Detective. That the plot is twisty and turny enough to be surprising and fun, but not so twisty and turny that you can’t figure out what’s what and form some (obviously wrong) theories about what is happening. And while there is the requisite and troubling number of naked dead women, the book balances this out – a little? – by not making the murders super sexual and including a token male victim.
So anyway. Go ahead and enjoy a distracting read. I even stayed up to finish this one. Which would be more impressive if I wasn’t beset with insomnia of Epic Proportions, BUT WHATEVER.
Literary Vice 