Tag: Mystery / Thriller Book Review

A young woman is murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and behind her eyelid is secreted a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star – a pentagram, the devil’s star. Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work.

This book is the 5th book in the “Harry Hole” series, and so far the series been going up and down for me personally.

The plot in this book is about a serial killer running around in Oslo, Norway who is obsessed pentagrams. Which made me expect some kind of satanism themed stuff happen in this book which of course didn’t happen.

The plot was interesting when the action was happening, the action of a murder scene or the investigation was very interesting and enjoyable. But when the action wasn’t on, which means when Harry was doing something else which didn’t involve the investigation was on the very edge of becoming boring. Which means that I have some very mixed opinions about the plot.

But also in this book we get sucked deeper into the sub-plot which was happening in this book and in the previous 2 books in this series which of course is the corruption in the police force and which is the reason why Harry still has a job as a police detective even thou he struggles with alcohol and shows up drunk or drinks at the job.

The characters here were very mixed here, of course I like Harry Hole a lot, and I find Oleg to be a very good side character which makes Harry’s personality really shine and show Harry not only as a alcoholic which happens to be a very good detective. I also liked a lot Rakel and wish that we could get more of her in this book which hopefully the next books in this series will fulfill the wish.

But when it comes to the rest of the characters they were pretty uninteresting, and I found myself not caring about them as much as I wanted to. 

The writing style here was very good, because it was like the author knew what words to use to fully grab my attention and to not let me stop reading this book until the very end. 

There is no cliffhanger at the end, which really doesn’t give me the urge to finish this series as fast as possible which I wish it would. 

I Give This Book 3 / 5

It is now beyond a doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of its most vital operations and its best networks. It is clear that the double agent is one of its own kind. But which one? George Smiley is assigned to identify him. And once identified, the traitor must be destroyed.

Maybe its my fault that I gave this book so low rating because starting at the 5th book in a series, is not a good choice. But to my defense I got this book as a gift and I didn’t know it was part of a series until I got started reading it.

Its important to say that I DNF-ed this book. Because I just couldn’t get into it, and reading it felt like a torture for me personally. I DNF-ed this book about half way in and what I can tell you about the plot is that it is a guy sitting at his desk all the time and looking through his papers.

The writing style and the language felt very foreign even thou it was written in English. The fact that this book was published in 1974 might have something to do with this fact.

As for the writing style itself I can say here is that is very badly written and really you will get tortured while reading this book because of the writing style-

The reason why I’ve tried to read this book in the first place is because I’ve heard that this book was the best spy book of all time. Which for me personally was far from the truth. 

The other thing about this book is that it contains a lot of British words and terms as well as spy terms which aren’t explained at all. Which means that you have to look them up on the Internet which for me personally is a huge no-no.

When it comes to the plot in this book, its all but straight going. The plot in this book is boring, very confusing and very uninteresting. The plot is very difficult because when you first start reading this book you don’t have any clue about what is happening. And when you start the get the hang of the plot, all you get is the main character sitting at his desk and reading his papers.

The characters in this book are very flat and very uninteresting. I just couldn’t get myself to care about any of the characters in this book. Because they don’t have any character or any personality. 

I Give This Book 1 / 5

After a drunken evening with former girlfriend Anna Bethsen, Police Detective Harry Hole wakes up at home with a headache, no cell phone, and no memory of the past twelve hours. The same day, Anna is found shot dead in her bedroom, making Hole a prime suspect in the investigation led by his hated adversary, Tom Waaler. Meanwhile, the bank robberies continue with unparalleled savagery, sending rogue detective Hole from the streets of Oslo to steaming Brazil in a race to close two cases and clear his name. But Waaler isn’t finished with his longtime nemesis quite yet.

This book is the 4th book in the “Harry Hole” series. Even thou you don’t need to read this series in a chronological order, I still choice to do it just to keep things simple for myself.

I need to say that this book was much better than the 3th book in this series. But so far I kept struggling through this and the previous 2 books in this series hoping that it would get better.

The plot here was intriguing when Harry Hole is framed as a murder. But still the majority of the plot is flat, uninteresting and boring at times. Which really disappointed me further.

This book has two bad guys in its plot, which are a bank robber and a murder framing Harry Hole for murders which actually were done by the murder himself. Which means that there were a lot o things happening in this book, which made it somehow hard to following the events in this book and keep track of everything.

This book first started as saying more or less that the bank robber and the murderer were two different people, but then it quickly got to the point were the bad guy here framed Harry Hole for being both the bank robber and the murderer which I really made it hard for me to wrap my head over how the bad guy could have done that shit.

The characters in this book were on the premise of being good characters, which really hurt me in a way, because you could see that Jo Nesbø was trying to make them good but somehow missed the mark by few inches.

The writing style was good, which means that it was much better than in the previous book. And it somehow made me hope that with this book you see the light of this series becoming better than the 2nd and 3rd book in this series.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

The Redbreast is a chilling tale of murder and betrayal that ranges from the battlefields of World War Two to the streets of modern-day Oslo. Follow Hole as he races to stop a killer and disarm a ticking time-bomb from his nation’s shadowy past. Vogue magazine says that “nobody can delve into the dark, twisted mind of a murderer better than a Scandinavian thriller writer”…and nobody does it better than Jo Nesbø! James Patterson fans should also take note.

This book is the third book in the “Harry Hole” series. And I got to say that this really disappointed me further than the second book in this series. 

Even thou the second book in this series in my opinion was bad, some how this book this book is even worse than the second book in this series.

This book has two plot lines with sort of creates a mystery for Harry Hole to solve. The first plot line is the modern day Oslo, Norway. And the second plot line was Oslo, Norway during WW2 time period. For me personally those two plot lines made it confusing and when the plot lines were switching made me lose interest in this book.

The character even Harry Hole were flat, boring and uninteresting. Which really pissed me off, because in the first book in this series, I completely loved Harry Hole, and seeing his character getting watered down like this in this book, really hurt my heart.

This book contains a lot of characters, which really makes it hard to keep track of every character because all of the characters we get in this book seem like the same character without anything which makes them unique or something which will set them apart from the rest of the characters.

The writing style here was not the greatest I’ve seen in this series, its not quite bad but it isn’t neither good. 

The twist at the end of this book was almost none existing, because the closer you got to the end, the more you could sense how this book would end. Which really pissed me off and made me what to scream at Jo Nesbø for why he done that.

During reading this book I had a lot of moments where I wanted to quite reading this book and just put it in the DNF category, but since this is the 3th book in the series I kept going until the end. To see if this book got better, but it never did.

I Give This Book 1 / 5

When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case. But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls. Surrounded by round-the-clock traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok lined with go-go bars, temples, opium dens, and tourist traps, trying to piece together the story of the ambassador’s death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to—not even Harry himself.

This book is the second book in the “Harry Hole” series written by Jo Nesbø. I loved the first book in this series, but this book wasn’t nearly as good as the first book in this series.

This book takes place in Thailand after a Norwegian ambassador is found dead in a brothel in Thailand. The Norwegian ambassador which was found was best buddies with a high positioned politician in Norway, so of course there was a lot of pressure put on Harry Hole.

The beginning of this book was very good, because we didn’t know what was happening, but as this book kept going it began going more and more down the hill for me personally.

However the plot itself was solid as well as the writing. But the twist at the could have been bigger and better in my opinion. Because I felt like there was something missing in the twist at the end.

I personally found the plot to be very unrealistic and confusing which really disappointed me a lot after the first book in this series was so great in my opinion.

The characters (expect of harry hole) were very flat and boring in a way. And I found myself not caring about them at all, and I was less interested in Harry Hole less interesting than in the first book. Which really made me take away some points from the final review of this book.

This book had also a lot of subplots which really made me uninterested because I picked up this book to follow harry hole on his journey of solving a murder instead of getting mini lectures about money-exchange, international business, politics in the police rankings, political power struggle and finance. If I wanted to get to know about these subplots I would pick up a nonfiction books about these topics and not learn about them from a mystery book.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

If you find one, he’s already found you. A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago.

I hate to say that but the Netflix series was much better than this book.

After I finished this book I was left with almost none opinions about this book. The reason behind this is because I was very neutral about this book and I just didn’t bother to make any strong opinions about it.

The plot is good, but the way it was written and presented to us made it feel like a disappointing in a way. Which really killed the hype I had for this book.

This book has a very good premise and a creepy vibe when we get to learn more about the serial killer who was terroizring the city of Copenhagen. However I was more and more disappointed in this book as I read it more of it.

The characters here are flat and they really felt like the same person over and over again but just in different clothes. However the characters had some good moments here and there which really made me give this book some points here and there.

The writing style here was very good, it really surprised me how good it is. The writing style made me want to read more books from this author. 

The beginning of this book was really good and promising. But the further this book went the more disappointed I got in this book. Which really sucked because I wanted to gives this book a higher rating because this book was the book I was most hyped about reading last year.

The huge twist at the end was really disappointing because I was expecting this huge mind-twisting revel of who the serial killer is. But unfortunately it didn’t happen. Which really made me think what the point of this book was.

I Give This Book 3 / 5

Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Harry is free to offer assistance, but he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble. The victim is a twenty-three year old Norwegian woman who is a minor celebrity back home. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Harry befriends one of the lead detectives, and one of the witnesses, as he is drawn deeper into the case. Together, they discover that this is only the latest in a string of unsolved murders, and the pattern points toward a psychopath working his way across the country. As they circle closer and closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those investigating the case.

Ive been wanting to start this series for years now, and I finally did that. And the first book in the Harry Hole series is amazing.

This book is about Harry Hole being send to Sydney to help the police to solve a murder case which turned out to be a serial killer case rather than one singular murder case.

The plot here is very good because we don’t have the idea who the killer is until the last 40 or so pages. And in my opinion makes me give the book some extra points if the identity of the killer is given to us when the main character breaks it down for everyone else in the book.

The main character which of course is Harry Hole, is one of the best main character I ever encountered so far at least. Because you can truly see the depths of his character. Because you get to see that he is a good person but at the same time he is haunted with the demons of his past as he is struggling to solve the case.

And the rest of the characters which we get to know in this book are very good as well. They all have something unique to them and something that makes us like them. Which really shows how good of an author Jo Nesbø really is.

This book has one pretty gruesome scene in the middle of it, when a clown is killed in a very brutal way. Which might trigger some people but for me it only added another layer to this book. Because we truly get to see how gruesome the serial killer who Harry Hole tries to catch really is.

The writing style is very good as well, it is like the author knows what words to use to grab our attention and to not let it go until the end.

The ending here is not so good as the rest of the story, which made me give this book one star less than what I originally wanted to give it. Which really disappointed me in a way.

I Give This Book 4 / 5

When the National Security Agency’s invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage… not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.

I had some expectations for this book which it didn’t live up to. Ive seen a lot of people call this book “excellent techno-thriller” which really got me excited to read this book, which turns out to not be the truth.

Sometimes the technological digressions in this book is simply too much, and it pretty much hard to keep track of it and why things are happening because of it.

The beginning of this book was very good because it was very interesting and it was fun and interesting to figure out what was happening in this little chaotic beginning. 

However the longer you dive into this book the worse it becomes, because it quickly becomes boring and the entire plot revolves around a software program which really wasn’t something very exciting.

After fishing this book, I noticed that all of the main characters in Dan Brown’s novel are very good looking, like a top model good looking. Which really should be answered by Dan Brown on why he does that.

When it comes to the characters in this book, well there isn’t a lot to say about them. They are interesting at first but the more we get to know them, we notice that they are very shallow and not so bright if it isn’t a last minute knowledge illumination.  

Another thing which annoyed me about the characters is that we get one woman and the rest of the recurring characters are men. We get 2 other female characters in this book which we only see for couple of pages. But the point is that this book is 99.8 % only men characters. And as you can expected all of the men characters in this book are running after the main character who is a female and trying to get to have sex with her more or less.

There are many times where the plot focuses more on the software program than on anything else. Which really annoyed me because I understand that, that software program is a big deal in this book but why not focus on the action or something else than only on the software program.

The writing style isn’t the best. Ive read one book from Dan Brown before going into this one, and well the writing style when it comes to Dan Brown or this book really don’t live to the fact that some people call him one of the greatest living authors. 

I Give This Book 2 / 5