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89 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Murder, mayhem and Norwegian noir, October 25, 2011
This review is from: The Leopard: A Harry Hole Novel (Hardcover)
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Again and again, author Jo Nesbo throws so many surprises at you and in such rapid succession that the unexpected becomes (almost) expected. In "The Leopard" a character says, "no one is as they seem, and most of life, apart from honest betrayal, is lies and deceit." The same could be said of the story and its many twists and reversals. Two thirds the way through this big (600 hardback pages) everything seems to be wrapped up but you expect - and you'll be right on - that our Norwegian sleuth Harry Hole (pronounced Whole-Lay, if you please) has a lot more sleuthing to do and more mayhem to deal with before all is revealed and everything explained. American readers are at an added disadvantage because we need to deal with the Norwegian names and locales. As usual with a Nesbo crime thriller, I started taking notes as soon as I opened the book. We meet up with Hole in Hong Kong where he's gone to wallow in guilt and misery and punish himself physically and mentally after the devastating events in "The Snowman." We also meet Kaja Solness, a member of the Oslo crime squad who has been dispatched to collect Hole and bring him back where he's needed to help solve a number of grisly murders that have all the earmarks of a serial killer. I prefer some nuance in my thrillers, some mental stimulation, plot intricacies that require thought and the application of logic. I prefer to have more than just sensation, thrills and a high body count resulting from the use of truly gruesome, grisly devices designed for torture and murder. In the "The Leopard," Nesbo stretches credulity and tests the bounds of plausibility with a nasty apple-sized killing device that registers nearly off the scale on the shock-horror meter. I couldn't help wondering how someone would clean the macabre thing between uses. For me Nesbo has been pushing things toward the extreme of violence and edging ever closer to exploitation. With each new novel in the series I feel more and more manipulated. But with that said, it remains unequivocal that "The Leopard," as with the previous Hole stories, is a thrill ride with velocity and force. Enough to keep me coming back? For at least one more ride. Yes, definitely. Note" "The Snowman" is the eighth mystery in the Harry Hole series. It's the longest, most dense and philosophical. The first two wait to be translated into English; as a result "The Redbreast" is first in the English series. The other five, in order, are "Nemesis" (2009), "The Devil's Star" (2010), "Redeemer" (2009), "Snowman" (2011) and "The Leopard" (2011).
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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly, this once-wonderful series is becoming more sensationalistic and less human, December 13, 2011
This review is from: The Leopard: A Harry Hole Novel (Hardcover)
I've read all of the books in the Harry Hole series that have been translated into English and I'm not crazy about the direction Nesbø is taking in the most recent titles, and particularly this one. First, the good things. I admire Nesbø's ability to depict broken people. He strips Harry down his soul, it seems, and makes us see the pain there. He's so good at showing the quiet, tender feelings Harry has for Rakel, Oleg, his father and some of the other people in his life. In this book, Nesbø gets into the complexities of Harry's relationship with his father, and this is very affecting. Nesbø has given us a lot of terrific female characters for Harry to work with over the course of this series, too: Ellyn, Beate, Katrine and now Kaja. When I started reading the Harry Hole series, one thing that struck me was how well Nesbø got into the mind of the killer and made his actions comprehensible and sometimes even made him almost sympathetic. The murders were always very human murders. Increasingly, I feel like Nesbø is getting away from the humanness in his killers and even, in a way, in Harry. Presenting us in recent books with serial killers and bizarre and elaborate murder methods is distancing. I feel like the books are becoming more sensationalistic and less real. Every book requires the reader to have a certain suspension of disbelief. You enter the world the author has created, knowing it is fiction, but willing to go along with the story and identify with its people, time and place. Nesbø made that suspension of disbelief difficult for me with this book. The long scenes of gruesome torture and murder seem like something out of an exploitation movie and are alienating to me. It feels manipulative, as if Nesbø is just trying to press the shock/horror button. The physical danger Harry gets in, and his superhuman endurance and ability to take punishment are almost cartoonish. Or like an old James Bond movie. Nobody could survive all the situations Harry gets into in this book. As Harry's situations become more extreme, and his methods of escape more elaborate, he becomes less believable as a character. Nesbø also depicts Harry as so wrecked by drink, drugs and smoking that it's not believable that he continues to be so attractive to women. I also got the feeling that Nesbø is starting to recycle material. Mikael Bellman, the workplace villain of this piece, is essentially a recycled Tom Waaler, the workplace villain of The Redbreast, Devil's Star and Nemesis. Finally, I thought the book was too long and the plot too convoluted. I still think Nesbø is a tremendously talented writer who can create unforgettable characters and stories. I just hope he can drop the outlandish stuff, forget the hackneyed serial killer theme, and get back to basics and humanity, the way he did in the earlier books.
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43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not up to the usual standard, I'm afraid, November 13, 2011
This review is from: The Leopard: A Harry Hole Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I'm a Harry Hole fan, and have thoroughly enjoyed all the other books that have been translated into English. But I have to say, I found "Leopard" to be a disappointment. There were several problems with this offering. Nesbo's books have always been complex in plotting, but in this case I think he overdid it. I'd liken it to this: you really love chocolate chip ice cream, but what happens if you eat a whole gallon of it at one sitting? That was what we had here. I found it almost impossible to keep accurate track of what was going on here; there was just too much. It resulted in a muddled, hard-to-understand mess. Then there was the problem with the ultimate denouement: the villain of the piece spends literally pages droning on and on to another character in explication of what was done, all - obviously - to achieve the end of explaining to the reader what actually happened. It was absolutely eye-rolling, like a B-grade movie from the 50s, or a Columbo episode. I think my three stars are generous, and done out of loyalty and acknowledgement of how good the earlier books are.
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