Drawn Back By The Thirst
He promises to bury him for good. Then he introduces the mere shadows of his master-skill and expects the others to be sate and content. But the world roars for more. And the thirst becomes unbearable…
After a four year break Jo Nesbo returns the world famous detective Harry Hole to the millions of readers around the globe. The eleventh book in the series is titled The Thirst and once again it demonstrates a perfectly twisted plot and suspense mingled together a là Nesbo.
Oslo is hit by a new series of brutal murders. All the victims are the women who return home after a Tinder date. But the most vicious thing is the killer’s MO: he uses denture-like metal teeth to bite the victim and drink her blood. This is the case, which definitely requires Harry Hole’s out-of-the-box thinking who’s now lecturing at the university with no intent to return to his active career of the detective. But how can he resist his own thirst to catch the serial killer? O perhaps the killers?
Jo Nesbo follows his easy-reading storytelling method, which implies several plot lines, well-known characters with their vices and ambitions and a new research area, which happens to be vampirism. As in his each novel, this time he introduces the bits from blood drinking history, from America’s native tribes to most recent criminal records on vampirist cases, providing the difference between a vampire and a vampirist. The latter being the one “who takes pleasure from drinking blood.”
As usual, there are at least three characters you’re about to suspect being a killer from the very beginning. It is a common Nesbo tactics to confuse the reader, sow the doubts and keep the suspense until the end. Though my insight and guessing this time have been right from the first encounter with a certain character. Perhaps I’ve already cracked the Nesbo code:))
Who expects more than a pleasure of reading from a crime novel? However, Jo Nesbo succeeds to invoke a more elaborated discussion than who’s the killer. The Thirst deals with the issues of jealousy and ambition, the feelings that might transform a man into a monster. And which of them is more dangerous.
The Thirst is the eleventh novel about Harry Hole but obviously not the last one (to the biggest joy of his fans). The four years spent without the imperfect detective confirmed his immortality both in commercial and popularity terms. Though the particular details left in The Police with their follow-up in The Thirst cause some doubts about the author’s determination to leave Harry Hole in peace for good. Or, in opposite, was it a straw to grab when initiating the sequel? Never mind. Just enjoy him coming back.
