The Devil's Star (Harry Hole Series #5)

by Jo Nesbo

Overview

In the heat of a sweltering Oslo summer, a young woman is found murdered in her flat—with one of her fingers cut off and a tiny red star-shaped diamond placed under her eyelid. An off-the-rails alcoholic barely holding on to his job, Detective Harry Hole is assigned the case with Tom Waaler, a hated colleague whom Harry believes is responsible for the murder of his partner. When another woman is reported missing five days later, and her severed finger turns up adorned with a red star-shaped diamond ring, Harry fears a serial killer is at work. But Hole's determination to capture a fiend and to expose Waaler's crimes is leading him into shadowy places where both investigations merge in unexpected ways, forcing him to make difficult decisions about a future he may not live to see.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061133985
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/01/2011
Series:	Harry Hole Series , #5
Pages:	452
Sales rank:	41,684
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

A musician, songwriter, and economist, Jo Nesbø is also one of Europe’s most acclaimed crime writers, and is the winner of the Glass Key Award, northern Europe’s most prestigious crime-fiction prize, for his first novel featuring Police Detective Harry Hole. Nesbø lives in Oslo.

What People are Saying About This

Michael Connelly

“Jo Nesbø is my new favorite thriller writer and Harry Hole my new hero.”

Editorial Reviews

Nobody can delve into the dark, twisted mind of a murderer better than a Scandinavian thriller writer.

Vogue

Nesbø has a knack for Euro noir.

Entertainment Weekly

In crime fiction terms, the ongoing Harry Hole is epic along the lines of something Count Tolstoy might have dreamed up. . . . Tremendous emotional resonance.

Toronto Star

Reading THE REDBREAST is like watching a hit movie. . . . The pacing is swift. The plot is precise and intricate. . . . THE REDBREAST is surprisingly witty at times and often grim. But it's always smart.

USA Today

Astonishingly confident. . . . The Devil's Star scores with an intriguing plot and Nesbo's mastery of pace and tension.

The Times (London)

Jo Nesbo has a credibly scary line on the power of corruption, and his complex plot culminates in a nail-biting episode with overtones of The Day of the Jackal.

The Independent

Bucks the trend… Nesbo's long-range plotting is careful, and the debate about the Norwegian elite's behaviour during the war cleverly managed.

London Review of Books

An elegant and complex thriller . . . Ingenious design. . . . Nesbo's book eloquently uses its multiple horrors to advance a disturbing argument: suppressing history is an open invitation for history to repeat itself.

New York Times Book Review

Superb.

Daily Telegraph (London)

A fine novel. . . . THE REDBREAST certainly ranks with the best of current American crime fiction.

Washington Post Book World

A well-crafted rollercoaster of a book. . . . Nesbo sets a cracking pace, the shambolic Hole is exasperating and endearing by turns, and a series of spectacular plot twists lead to a thrilling finale. Highly recommended.

The Guardian (London)

Nesbo returns with another novel that is every bit the multitextured, complexly plotted, psychologically rich thriller that made Redbreast such an unqualified success. . . . No doubt about it: Nesbo belongs on every crime-fiction fan's A-list.

Booklist (starred review)

Jo Nesbø is my new favorite thriller writer and Harry Hole my new hero.

Michael Connelly

"Nesbo returns with another novel that is every bit the multitextured, complexly plotted, psychologically rich thriller that made Redbreast such an unqualified success. . . . No doubt about it: Nesbo belongs on every crime-fiction fan’s A-list."

Booklist

"A well-crafted rollercoaster of a book. . . . Nesbo sets a cracking pace, the shambolic Hole is exasperating and endearing by turns, and a series of spectacular plot twists lead to a thrilling finale. Highly recommended."

The Guardian(London)

The Devil's Star is a big, ambitious, wildly readable story that pits the protagonist against a serial killer and an enemy within the Oslo police department. The novel has its flaws, but for most of the way it's compelling…a novel worth reading, for its characters, for the quality of its writing and for its wealth of detail.
—The Washington Post

Patrick Anderson

A serial killer taunts Harry Hole in Nesbø's searing third crime novel to feature the Oslo police detective to be made available in the U.S. (after Nemesis). Still suffering from alcohol-fueled demons and obsessed with hunting for evidence against a clearly dirty cop, Hole grudgingly agrees to help look into the murder of a woman whose finger has been amputated and a red diamond stuck under her eyelid. More bodies follow, with the murderer leaving identical five-pointed diamonds (the titular devil's star) at each crime scene. At first the killings appear to be random, but Hole soon discovers an ominous pattern. Nesbø brilliantly incorporates threads from earlier novels, including Hole's often tumultuous relationship with his lover, Rakel, without ever losing the current story's rhythm. Even with—or perhaps because of—his flaws, Hole is arguably one of today's most fascinating fictional detectives. 5-city author tour. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Devastated by his inability to convince his superiors that fellow detective Tom Waaler is both guilty of his former partner Ellen's murder (The Redbreast) and an arms dealer, Harry Hole goes on a four-week bender. Dragged back to work by his loyal boss, Harry is partnered with Waaler to investigate what quickly looks like a serial killer on the loose in Oslo who leaves star-shaped red diamonds with his victims. Upset by his inability to maintain a relationship with girlfriend Rakel and her son, Harry dries out and buries himself in the case, investigating with only the help of forensic tech Beate and determined not only to identify the killer but finally to get Waaler. VERDICT Harry is one of the best lone-wolf cops for the 21st century, and Nesbø's third book is equally as good as The Redbreast and Nemesis. Scandinavian noir is alive and well, and Nesbø is one of its best authors. Highly recommended, especially for readers who like Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series (Faceless Killers) or Arnaldur Indridason's Inspector Erlendur series (Jar City).—Jessica Moyer, Univ. of Minnesota, Coll. of Education & Human Development, Minneapolis

Library Journal

As a serial killer terrorizes Oslo, Inspector Harry Hole (Nemesis, 2009, etc.) is battling even more fearsome demons. When copywriter Camilla Loen is shot to death, her index finger removed and a star-shaped red diamond tucked beneath her eyelid, Chief Inspector Bjarne Moller has the bright idea of pairing his heir-apparent, Inspector Tom Waaler, with barely functional alcoholic Harry, who's spent most of the previous month on unofficial leave drowning his grief over his late colleague, Officer Ellen Gjeltsen. But Harry doesn't just dislike and distrust Waaler; he's convinced that Waaler is Prince, the mob's inside man who murdered Ellen. So the salt-and-pepper rapport between Harry and Waaler is more like arsenic-and-cyanide. Even pulling Harry off the case so that he can investigate the disappearance of producer Wilhelm Barli's wife turns sour because a parcel containing her severed middle finger swiftly makes it clear that singer/actress Lisbeth Barli has become another victim of the Courier Killer. The exhaustingly wide-ranging case poses three crucial questions. What pattern underlies the Courier Killer's choice of victims and modus operandi? When the police arrest an innocent suspect, can Harry protect him long enough to get the goods on the real killer? And how can he possibly neutralize the hydra-headed Waaler, who grows more dangerous the more he's thwarted?Not all the answers are equally interesting, but even readers new to this white-hot series will be impressed by Nesbo's generous plotting and his insight into dark places in the human soul. Author tour to New York, Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C.

Kirkus Reviews