Customer Reviews

The Leopard: A Harry Hole Novel

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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).

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 Nesbų is taking in the most recent titles, and particularly this one.

First, the good things. I admire Nesbų'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, Nesbų gets into the complexities of Harry's relationship with his father, and this is very affecting. Nesbų 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 Nesbų 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 Nesbų 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. Nesbų 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 Nesbų 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. Nesbų 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 Nesbų 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 Nesbų 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.

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.

Jo Nesbo has some gruesome imagination! I knew this going in, as I've read three of his other books and especially liked The Snowman, but this one just may have gone too far for me.

Harry Hole, Nesbo's brilliant but unstable and self-destructive detective, has retreated from the world after his last case cost him his equilibrium and the woman he loved. He's decamped to Hong Kong, where he's little more than a vagrant, having racked up serious debts to a loan shark, who has seized his passport. He's been escaping into the opium dens and has no intention of returning to his former life as a star investigator of serial murders, preferring the slow death of drugs and oblivion. Enter Kaja Solness, a female detective from Oslo, who has been charged with bringing him back to Norway, where his expertise is sorely needed. Three women have been found murdered in puzzling ways, the latest an MP. Hole has no intention of complying until she tells him his father is dying.

Naturally, he returns, if only to see his father, and naturally he begins to work on the case, taking a contrarian view from that of his colleagues that ultimately yields results. Naturally, he gets caught up in the politics of the police Crime Squad and the state Kripos agency and bests his adversaries, and naturally he is imperiled and has to draw on all his gumption and tolerance of pain to avoid certain death.

The Leopard is an intricately plotted book, with numerous characters, numerous references to past events and numerous twists and turns--probably even more than previous volumes in the series. As before, Nesbo jumps back and forth between the killer's world and that of his protagonist, with so many people and places to keep track of that at times it seemed like overkill (no pun intended). It's as if he's thrown in every imaginable issue a troubled middle-aged cop could be confronting. My biggest issue, however, is with his detailed descriptions of the murders, especially those using a torture device that he invented. It certainly is original, but there's only so much sadism, mayhem and death I can take. As a result, there's no way I can say I "enjoyed" the book the way I have most of Henning Mankell's books and some recent Nordic crime fiction because The Leopard is a particularly violent book, and Hole is utterly self-destructive, as if Nesbo is trying to outdo himself each time. I found the violence in The Snowman far more tolerable than what he concocted for this book, and while Nesbo is clearly talented, I don't know if I can stomach any more of his books.

Three and a half stars.

When we last saw Harry Hole, he was depressed, dejected and definitely "burnt out". He had just arrested "The Snowman", a depraved killer who made even an experienced detective such as Harry sick to his stomach. To cap it all off, ""The Snowman" had taken Harry's former fiancee, Rakel and her young son, Oleg prisoner, using them as shields against Harry. The danger to Rakel and her son made her break off the engagement. Harry was finished; he was making plans to relocate to somewhere warm and crowded so he could get lost and never be found again. I was very sad because Steig Larson had passed away and Henning Makell had just announced that he was done writing Kurt Wallender mysteries. However, the day has been saved; unable to solve Oslo's latest serial killings, Harry's boss, Gunnar Hagen (Hagen never officially accepted Harry's resignation) has a sent a beautiful young blond detective named Kaja Solness to track Harry down and bring him back. She finds him in Hong Kong which, as we all know is very warm and very crowded. Harry, as might be expected, is not interested in going back to Norway and yet another insane killer, but Kaja and Gunnar have a "hole" card (no pun intended). Harry's father, Olav, is dying and only has about a month to live. Kaja cleans up Harry's Hong Kong life and debts, and they return to Oslo. Harry insists that he will only stay long enough to be with his father and bury him and will not get involved in this latest round of killings. However, having arrived in Norway, Harry discovers that there is an internecine war going on between his Crime Squad of the regular police and the Kripos or Central Crime Unit led by a Type A Alpha Male (I know, redundant) who plans on taking over all crime solving authority in Norway and becoming king of the hill. Hagen and Harry's former comrades need his help if the District police aren't to become an asterisk at the bottom of History book pages. Harry agrees to stay and help but only as long as his father is alive.

The murder victims are varied - young and older women, young and older men - who don't seem to have any connection to each other. Various methods are used including drowning, shooting and killing by use of a Victorian torture machine invented to persuade people in the Congo during the reign of King Leopold. Nesbo winds his story through twists and turns to the solution. The reader keeps thinking they know who the REAL killer is only to have a new fact turn up which turns all previous theories on their head. As with all Nesbo books, this one keep moving. Don't be discourged by its size, you will forget how many pages there are as you stay up to the wee hours working through the story. Nesbo is an old fashioned story smith. I remember reading that Chekov or one of those other mysterious Russian playwrites said "if an author introduces a gun in the first scene of the book or play, he(she) had better use it by the last act". Watch for one of these in "The Leopard". Nesbo has only had four books translated so far, but I look forward to reading them all and hoping that more will be coming after that. I would only wish that publishers would print the original publishing date, as well as the date the book was published in English so that the English speaking reader could relate the background time to the happenings in the story. In the meantime, this book is well worth the time for any serious reader of mysteries and thrillers.

I have read several of Nesbų's works, and The Snowman is my favorite. I was happy to receive this through Vine, and hoped for the kind of writing that made The Snowman such a riveting read. Like in his previous Harry Hole novels, Nesbų excels at Harry's characterization. Readers new to Hole will learn about his inner demons, and those who are familiar with the tormented character that is Harry Hole will be able to further empathize with Hole's problems, and come to understand him better.

In his novels, Nesbų is also able to show readers what makes a serial killer tick, presenting the perpetrator as one who is incredibly flawed, yet also highly intelligent. But this novel, like some others in the series, seems to get too over the top, focusing more on the torture implements used by the killer, and the method of killing to the point that it seems way out there. I prefer the focus to be on the human motivations, the human aspect of what makes people do what they do, rather than painting elaborate murder scenes that just seem so far-fetched and unnecessary, bringing to mind those torture-horror movies like Hostel, for example. Also, the crooked cop storyline seems overdone and a repeat of past plotlines.

As much as I like Nesbų's works, I think The Leopard is in dire need of a good editor who should have pared down the story, focusing on the essentials, doing away with padding, and emphasizing the human aspect of the story rather than sensationalizing it.

Harry Hole, having resigned from Oslo's Crime Squad in Norway after the Snowman's capture, is licking his wounds in Hong Kong where opium and gambling help dull the pain of his pyrrhic victory over that foe. But Harry is a wanted man, wanted by the Chinese mafia in Hong Kong for gambling debts and wanted by his former boss in Norway, Gunnar Hagen, who needs Harry's help to capture a new serial killer on the prowl. The case has become pivotal in a turf war between Oslo's Crime Squad and Kripos, a specialized police unit with a new and very ambitious director. But Harry has no interest in Hagan's dilemma and refuses to return to Norway until he learns that his father is dying. Suddenly, remaining in Hong Kong is no longer an option. And now The Leopard, a killer using an ingenious torture device known as Leopold's apple, becomes Harry's next case.

More than a fascinating mystery spanning three continents, "The Leopard" draws fans of Harry Hole deeper into the psyche of a detective haunted as much by his successes as his failures. An alcoholic with no tolerance for political games, Harry is an outsider in his own department, the iconic loner who somehow manages to get results. This fifth book in Jo Nesbo's popular series showcases all the elements of a mystery thriller: clues that lead everywhere and nowhere in rapid succession, an ingenious murderer who could be behind any of the multiple plausible suspects, settings that have weight and substance, romantic complications, and a flawed hero who can't seem to escape danger wherever he turns. From the opium dens of China to the snowy woods of Norway and the mines of Africa, Harry confronts death at every turn. And when the action pauses there is Oystein, Harry's lifelong friend and confidant, who proves one of the most enjoyable characters in this complex tale, an island of rest amidst the mayhem that is Harry.

"The Leopard" is a satisfying book of many layers that continues the saga of Harry Hole. Whether or not the killer is captured becomes a minor point in the struggles of a man who has captured the interest of crime readers around the globe.

(The first four books in the series are "The Redbreast," "Nemesis," "The Devil's Star," and "The Snowman.")

I read all of the other books in the series and this one just plain stunk. The Snowman definitely stretched my patience at times, but this one bent it so far out of shape, I'm still trying to straighten myself out.

Inspector Harry Hole is at it again, resigning that is. After the last traumatic episode his wife and stepson have left him and Hole finds his way to the opium dens of Hong Kong to wallow in self-pity and disappear from the real world.
He is dragged from the viper's pit when two young women are found, brutally murdered with another unique method that Nesbo seems to relish in bringing to the unsuspecting public, along with a third suspected of the same murderer. Hole is Norway's expert at catching serial killers. The news that Hole's father is on his death-bed has more reason for him to return. He is done with police work, just ask him.
In a wild chase that leads us through the ski slopes and lakes of Norway to the outer regions of the Congo on Africa's western plains Hole traces the suspect, now of several other bizarre murders as he tries to find the common link that brings all these hapless soles into the path of the killer.
When State run authorities impede his progress Hole strikes out alone, as usual, with all the skills of a modern-day Colombo, to unmask the culprit in his own style. Talking of style, for those of you that have had the pleasure of reading Nesbo's other US published novels I started to complain to myself when I discovered a pattern in his work only to have that shattered in a matter of pages, almost like Nesbo set a trap. Don't try and get into his or Hole's head; he will shred you.
The Leopard is a work of pure genius, a skillfully woven mystery with enough action and gore to thrill the regular suspense lover in you. Nesbo has done it again; brilliant

Nesbo is an outstanding thriller writer and has set very high standards and expectations. This book is a good one but somehow is not as satisfying. It pushes the Nesbo style and mannerisms just a little too far. In particular, there is always a gruesome, vicious and demonic element in his plots, with the villain often in the background and revealed mostly by his thoughts. Here, the gruesome is too dominant for me at least; this is a nasty story and the killing almost necrophiliac in its sadism. It pulled me back from entering into the story and characterizations.

The same pushing too far applies to his depiction of Harry Hole, the central serial killer police tracker at the center of Nesbo's books. Harry is a determined alcoholic, woefully crippled in his emotions yet almost saintly in his commitment to catching the evildoer regardless of his own life and the people he gets involved with. In the Leopard, he has added pursuit of drugs to his bleak self-destruction. One of the appeals of Nesbo's books are the good women he could be with and who might help him release himself from his soul- and body-destroying nihilism. He cannot find a quietus and once more damages another who reaches out and once more ends the tale even further away from peace and hope. It's painful to read at times, especially towards the end.

It's a long book, meticulously laid out in its detail of the investigation where once more there are hidden forces at work against Harry -- the police and other agencies are often as reptilian as the criminals. I found the pace just a little too slow and had to work to stay with the story rather than be caught up by it.

I recognize the quality of the novel. For readers unfamiliar with Nesbo's work, I don't think this is the best one to start with. Redbreast and The Snowman are superb and have all the virtues of the Leopard with a little more verve and emotional appeal. He really is a superb writer. For other readers who know the earlier books, this is certainly worth buying. I hope the next ones reorient the world of Harry Hole and the nature of the crimes -- this is very bleak and the high quality of Nesbo's style and story building make its bleakness disturbingly real. Is that a positive or negative? For me, it was off-putting in the end. I respect the work but I didn't really like it.