PHANTOM: JOE NESBO

The fourth or fifth novel I have read by Nesbo, THE PHANTOM seems darker than the others,  Harry Hole, the disgraced detective, more lost and forsaken then ever.  The story begins when Harry's stepson, Olaf, is accused of murdering a drug addict, forcing Harry back to his old stomping grounds, as he flies back from Hong Kong where he had been living.  In the attempts to prove Olaf's innocence, Harry ends up in the middle of Norway's drug culture.  A drug called Violin has pushed aside all other drugs, master minded by a secretive dealer called Dubai.  As Harry slowly moves towards the truth, he uncovers police conspiracies, corrupt pilots, police burners (who get rid of evidence if a drug dealer is caught), and the conspiracy rises to the top, to one Mikael Bellman, who we have seen in previous novels.  We find that Olaf has become a pusher, addicted to violin like many of the young and he's accused of killing his best friend and fellow drug dealer, Gustavo.  Harry doggedly stays on the trail, barely surviving a couple of assassination attempts by Dubai, but eventually corners the old man, kills him but also finds that Gustavo, the victim, is his Dubai's son, complicating matters.  Meanwhile, Harry's love interest in Rakel is briefly rekindled and they hope to start a new life together in Hong Kong, but it ends abruptly when Harry realizes that Olaf actually was the killer of Gustavo.  And he cannot stop being a policeman and must turn his step son in.  The crime, one of passion, resulted from Gustavo having sold Irene, Olaf's lover, to a drug dealer for money. Violin, the drug,  becomes 'the lover' in this book, as it trumps any human relationship.  The story ends ambiguously; does Harry die?  What happens to Olaf and Rakel? Does Truls Bernsten, the cowardly burner, kill Mikael Bellman?  None of these questions are answered, just hinted at in the end of the novel.

The plot, the coincidences, seem oddly realistic and the picture of the effects of the drug Violin on  its users is palpable.  Nesbo gets inside this world about as well as any writer.  And his Harry Hole out does  Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallender in doom and gloom.  Not exactly a Christmas book, a pick'em upper.