Nesbø’s gritty new whodunit brings Norwegian ex-cop face to face with serial killer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/08/2023 (1153 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stop us if you’ve heard this before — a monstrous serial killer who delights in torturing women to death and possibly eats their brains is stalking Oslo, and only whack-job ace police detective Harry Hole can save the day.

Harry — alas, the world’s most depressed person — is nowhere in sight. His previous misadventures and all the innocent collateral damage deaths that unintentionally resulted from his getting the bad guy have Hole in the seedier parts of Los Angeles trying to drink himself to death before the money runs out.

Oh dear.

Whatever could possibly convince Hole to sober up long enough to get on a plane for Norway?

Any Jo Nesbø tale is utterly bizarre, so let’s run this past you for credulity: Harry befriends a Hollywood has-been elderly woman who’s a minor-league version of the over-the-hill actress in Sunset Boulevard, she’s a fortune in debt to a Mexican cartel, Harry gets on the wrong side of the cartel and they’re both seriously dead unless Harry covers the debt in a few days.

Where ever will Harry get — oh wait, there’s a loathsome slimy Oslo real estate magnate who’s the prime suspect in the serial killings and he will take care of Harry’s financial problems if Hole can find the real killer.

And away we go.

Hole is no longer a police officer. Why he hasn’t been arrested or certified are good questions. His former ace detective partner, Katrine, is running the homicide squad in Oslo, her husband/Harry’s BFF apparently killed himself, Harry’s wife was murdered but it’s unclear by whom and Katrine’s also a single mom whose little boy is the spitting image of — well, let’s talk about Killing Moon’s demons.

The murders — plural, hardly a spoiler — continue, each more disgusting and dehumanizing than the last. We meet the killer and may think we know who he is, may be sure we know who he is. Maybe we think hmmm, two of those really iffy characters, maybe possibly potentially they could be just one person, and there’s your killer.

Oh, please.

There are red herrings galore, some characters will look suspicious for many chapters, others who may suddenly come to a gory end. Herrings and Norway — no, too easy.

Cocaine is everywhere, ugly perverted sex involving powerful older men and younger boys is rampant, the killer is breeding parasitic slugs for nauseating purposes, smart people keep going off alone with other folks who should be setting off alarms — why do women in Killing Moon feel lust even after they see the knife come out?

Is it a cliché that having a dad come to a tiny little boy’s bedroom every night produces a serial killer?

Nesbø is very much an acquired taste who sells a whopping big pile of books that contain scenes you’d reckon no person you’d want to know would want to read.

Nesbø might argue that Killing Moon isn’t about horrid violence just against women — after all, the author might say, that bit about the killer’s favourite childhood book being about the torture methods of a certain ethnocultural group, Nesbø’s victim herein who got their brains boiled while still alive was a man. Hands up which members of your book club are even more eager to read the book now.

Aware the clock is ticking in L.A., Harry has done the Magnificent Seven thing of rounding up old friends of questionable attributes to help him. Of course, he insinuates himself into the official police investigation, to the chagrin of Katrine and the brass.

And sure enough, Harry solves the case. Oopsies, wrong guy. Then he solves it a second time. Wrong again. Don’t you hate when that happens?

The Scandinavian countries are wonderful, their people regularly topping listings of the happiest nations on Earth. Yet their murder mysteries, their books and their TV police shows have cornered the market on sociopaths and on clinically messed-up coppers.

Maybe when you finish Killing Moon you could try a Kurt Wallander novel to cheer you up. Oh, wait, right…

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin would love to visit Oslo again — should he get his affairs in order first? And only order beer that doesn’t contain those icky parasites?