Pursuit of a bloodthirsty killer, one prowling through the snow and preying like a deadly cat, requires a long and dangerous hunt. Jo Nesbo's crime-thriller, The Leopard (2010, Harvill Secker, London, 613 pages, translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett), is a marathon-like novel with more twists and turns than any icy Scandinavian highway.
Using mysterious techniques, someone appears bent on killing everyone who stayed at a Norwegian cabin-hostel in the snowy mountains near Oslo on one fateful night. Some victims drowned in blood, their skulls stabbed dozens of times from the inside. Then a lady politician loses her head, decapitated by a noose in a chilly park.
The victims felt terror. “Where was he? Was he standing right behind her? She held her breath, listened. She couldn't hear anything, but she could sense a presence. Like a leopard. Someone had told her leopards made so little noise they could sneak right up to their prey in the dark.” Soon the public turns fearful too.
Perplexed, the Olso police send a detective to find Inspector Harry Hole, a reliable but emotionally damaged and addiction-prone investigator hiding in a seedy corner of distant Hong Kong. Will he agree to return home and tackle the case?
A confused character, Harry has a moment of helpful clarity when his hospitalized father insists that love and hatred aren't so different. “It's the same currency. Everything starts with love. Hatred is just the other side of the coin.”
Despite Harry's weaknesses, he holds pure intentions. “I had begun to get to know Harry.... He couldn't care less about personal prestige. He only wants to catch the bad boys. All the bad boys.”
The story follows a huge triangle – with the crimes in northern Europe, Hole's hideout in Hong Kong and a sinister instrument of torture, a deadly “apple”, sourced deep in Africa. Sweltering, violent Africa, such a contrast to Norway, looks like the nastiest stop. “Kinzonzi was 19 years old. He had been a soldier since he was 11. The PDLA, the People's Democratic Liberation Army, had stormed his village. They had smashed his brother's head with the stock of a Kalashnikov and raped his two sisters while forcing his father to watch.”
The chase leads Harry, his colleagues and even some rivals into serious peril. But for readers, the dangers hold maximum interest. For example, what's it like to be buried by snow in a huge avalanche? “It was deafeningly quiet and pitch black. Harry tried to move. Impossible. His body seemed to be cast in plaster. He couldn't move one single limb.... The world outside had ceased to exist; time, gravity, temperature didn't exist. Harry had no idea what was up or down or how long he had been in the snow.”
At the opposite extreme, step to the rim of a brooding volcano? “Kaja stood at the edge looking down. The scorching air rose, hit her face like a hot breeze. The poisonous smoke had already made her dizzy, but perhaps that was just the tremulous air blurring her vision, making the lava quiver, down there in the abyss where it shone with tinges of yellow and red.”
Shamefully, the Norwegian police plot, spy and undercut each other, always competing for glory and jurisdiction. No wonder the killer consistently outwits and eludes them.
So many deceptions, flaws and failures can get depressing. “...no one is as they seem, and most of life, apart from honest betrayal, is lies and deceit. And the day we discover we are no different is the day we no longer want to live.”
Despite clues and hints from Nesbo, many deliberately misleading, the culprit's identity stays hidden until the late-going. So it's a pleasing who-done-it tale.
As shadowy figures glide across the snow on skis, just a little too distant for readers to identify, chilling insights emerge into the perceived justification for murder. “For my part, I believe that the ability to kill is fundamental to any healthy person. Our existence is a fight for gain, and whoever cannot kill his neighbor has no right to an existence. Killing is, after all, only hastening the inevitable. Death allows no exceptions, which is good because life is pain and suffering. In that sense, every murder is an act of charity.”
With splendid word choices, Nesbo shows his readers exactly what happens. “A crocodile of nursery children paraded past the car in chafing rain gear.” But his sentence structure may have flaws. Did the children wear rain gear, or did the car?
Multi-talented, this award-winning Norwegian author (born in 1960) also works as a musician, songwriter and economist. His books regularly feature troubled police investigator Harry Hole. Nesbo's other novels include The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil's Star, The Redeemer and The Snowman.
After a long trek through these pages, readers will close The Leopard only reluctantly. By then, Harry feels like a close friend. Happily, there's also a certain confidence that the author and his favorite hero have more adventures ahead.
Approval rating: 76 per cent.
For more information: www.rbooks.co.uk or www.jonesbo.co.uk
(January 8, 2012)
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