Midnight Sun

Starred review from December 21, 2015
Jon, the narrator of this excellent standalone from Edgar-finalist Nesbø, is a “fixer,” or hit man, akin to the hero of 2015’s Blood on Snow. Jon, who has done jobs for an Oslo crime boss known as the Fisherman, has fled the city for Kåsund, a tiny village in the far north populated by Sami (Lapps) and dominated by a very strict religious ethos. Taking refuge in a church, he tells the townspeople he meets that his name is Ulf. A stranger in a strange land, Ulf slowly reveals what led him to leave Oslo: a failed hit and a theft that has Johnny Moe, the Fisherman’s henchman, after him. Ulf is a bad boy with a heart of gold; he got into trouble because he was trying to help someone close to him. His self-mocking deprecations are endearing: “Not that I’m an irresponsible or careless person; I’ve just got really bad judgment.” Immaculately plotted and perfectly paced, the book is also darkly funny and deadly serious. Scandinavian gloom notwithstanding, it has a neatly satisfying and surprisingly moving ending. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

December 15, 2015
The world's worst hit man goes aground in a little Norwegian town far above the Arctic Circle in this sharp, spare, postcard-sized tale. Entry-level drug dealer Jon Hansen never wanted to kill anybody--his trigger finger refuses to do the job every time he's called on to shoot--and that's probably why he never did. Even though his shadowy boss, the Fisherman, the drug king of Norway, knows he killed Toralf Jonsen over an unpaid debt, the big boss is wrong; Jon only loaned his childhood friend the gun he ended up using to shoot himself. So when the Fisherman, who was also Toralf's employer, asks Jon to kill Gustavo King, another underling who owes him big-time, he's taking more of a chance than he thinks. Jon can't shoot Gustavo, and he's relieved when Gustavo offers to pay him and disappear. Things can't possibly go as smoothly as that, of course, and they don't. The Fisherman gets wind of his quarry's escape and sends Jon's replacement, the far more capable assassin Johnny Moe, first after Gustavo, then after Jon. Will Jon be able to stay hidden in the tiny hunting cabin he's occupied outside the hamlet of Kasund, which is so intimate that even 10-year-old Knut Sara knows he's a rotten shot? And if Johnny tracks him down to his frigid lair, will the locals who've come to know him--especially Knut's mother, recently widowed Lea Sara, and her father, a stern evangelical pastor, come together to protect him more successfully than he protected Gustavo? Wasting not a word, Nesb (Blood on Snow, 2015, etc.) paints an indelible portrait of a criminal loser who reflects when he's faced with the supreme threat to his existence that "it was actually hard to think of anyone who was more dispensable than me."

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December 15, 2015
Norway, 1978. A long-haired hit man with a reluctant trigger finger arrives in Kasund, a remote village in the far north, fleeing a vindictive drug lord known as the Fisherman. Unprepared and unprovisioned, he meets Lea Sara and her son, Knut, devout adherents to Lstadian Lutheranism, who provide him with shelter and other necessities despite his lame cover story. Lea's husband has been lost at sea, and, as a halting friendship develops, the hit man, who calls himself Ulf, begins to wonder whether it could become something more. In this continuation of Blood on the Snow (2015), Nesb deftly portrays the endless summer sun and empty stillness of Ulf's refuge, and fills in Ulf and Lea's troubled histories with economical brushstrokes. The sense of impending menace builds almost invisibly until both damaged souls discover real reasons to live at the moment it could all be taken away from them. Crime novel, character study, and closed-society romance, it all balances nicely until an improbable escape and an ending that feels just a little too pat. It's hard to be too dark when the sun won't stop shining.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Though the Harry Hole series has been the best-selling Nesb's biggest draw, any book from Scandinavian noir's top living writer will be on wish lists and holds lists. Have this on hand at your library.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2016

Nesbo quickly follows up his stand-alone novel Blood on Snow with a second short book in this new series. Jon is on the run from his boss, a powerful crime lord called the Fisherman, not only because he faked killing a man who stole from the Fisherman but also, albeit for an altruistic purpose, he took the money the supposed dead man had stolen. Now calling himself Ulf, Jon flees north to Norway's isolated and underpopulated Arctic Circle, where time seems to have stopped. Desperate for a place to hide, he accepts help from the quirky citizens, first from a nine-year-old boy and his mother, then a local shopkeeper. In perpetual fear of being caught by the Fisherman's henchmen, Ulf soon worries about the lives of those who are aiding him. VERDICT Nesbo delivers a tale of hope and redemption in this brief story of a man who blunders into a life of crime and then tries to extricate himself with a minimum of damage to those around him. Although this is unlike the author's gritty "Harry Hole" stories, it is wholeheartedly recommended for Nesbo fans and readers who enjoy strong character development. [See Prepub Alert, 8/17/15.]--Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2015

Nesbo departs from his celebrated Harry Hole series, but no matter; this brief, intensely fable-like account of a golden-hearted hit man is a sequel to the New York Times best-selling Blood on Snow, being readied for the big screen by Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Bros. Here, our antihero arrives in a small Norwegian town above the Arctic Circle, on the run from a particularly vicious Oslo drug lord for whom he once acted as fixer.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 25, 2016
This short Norwegian thriller focuses on an antihero (in this case a sympathetic one) involved with a brutal Oslo crime lord known as the Fisherman. The story unfolds from the perspective of Jon, who uses his reputation as a killer to gain a high-paying job as assassin for the Fisherman in order to pay for medication for his leukemia-stricken daughter. When Jon is morally unable to fulfill an assigned contract, he’s forced to flee the Fisherman’s wrath—and Oslo—for a map speck above the Arctic Circle populated by a strict religious sect. There he begins a new life, making friends and enemies, and falling in love with a young widow, while never forgetting that, eventually, he’ll have to deal with the Fisherman. Singer-songwriter Gordon, cofounder of the alt rock band Sonic Youth, reads for the audio edition of this male-narrated novel. Gordon’s voice, though smoky and properly dramatic when necessary, is clearly feminine. While this may serve the author’s prose well enough in general, the gender contrast has a tendency to undermine some of the novel’s more violent and more intimate passages. A Knopf hardcover.