Jo Nesbo Turns Crime Into Horror In His Newest Novel The Night House

After return of Harry Hole in Killing Moon, the best-selling Norwegian author Jo Nesbo has no intention to press on the breaks. Only this time he's changing his genre to a twisted horror novel in The Night House.

In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the woods. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices start . . . When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne. Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.

You can have a taste of this spooky story by reading the extract here.

The book should enter the bookstores in the end of September.

Meanwhile Jo Nesbo's standalone novel Midnight Sun has been adapted by the Sky Original (titled The Hanging Sun) and has closed the 79th Venice International Film Festival last year.