Killing Moon, by Jo Nesbo.

 

            Harry Hole.  Ah, Harry Hole, Jo Nesbo’s brilliant alcoholic Norwegian detective, adept at solving the heinous crimes of serial-killers, but just about done-for by the time this story starts.  Harry is in Los Angeles, determined to drink himself to death or, when his money runs out, to finish everything off by his own hand – and gun.  To join his beloved Rakel, cruelly murdered by a friend who wanted the ultimate revenge – but fate (or karma) has other plans for Harry:  he rescues an elderly lady from death by her creditors, but there’s a time limit on their generosity:  he has a week to find nearly a million dollars, or Lucille, whose kindness to Harry has been legendary, gets a bullet.

     Coincidentally, he receives a call from Oslo with a job offer:  working as a private detective to prove the innocence of a multi-millionaire who is facing murder charges after the bodies of two young women were found within a week of each other, the second one beheaded.  Suspicion has fallen on the millionaire because they were both guests at a lavish cocaine-addled party he threw in his penthouse on the night the first girl died and despite the fact that his wife provides an alibi for him, there is evidence that this is not the case. 

It is no easy thing to return to Oslo with all its wonderful and terrible memories – and all the familiar drinking holes, not to mention all the colourful characters from Harry’s past, including his former police colleagues, some of whom are less than pleased to see him, but Harry is on a time limit and time is of the essence:  he knows that Markus Røed is probably innocent of the crimes with which he is charged, but he’s guilty of crimes just as destructive and believes that power and money can buy anything, including Harry Hole, who is singularly unimpressed:  just tell him the truth and show him the money.

But Markus has rampaged through his life without a thought for the people he crushed under his hand-made shoes on the way – until one of them decides to strike back, and fashions a revenge that is truly Biblical. 

And I, who pride myself on guessing whodunit from early on in the piece, was  truly tricked into thinking it was someone else entirely – I could have taken my pick of all the red herrings on offer and still came up crook, so Jo Nesbo has done it again:  given us a truly thrilling page-turner, with wonderful supporting characters and a protagonist who has endeared himself permanently to every reader to the extent that there would be an international outcry if Harry Hole did indeed decide to end it all.  SIX STARS.   

 

Did I Ever Tell You This?  By Sam Neill.                               Memoir.

 

            New Zealand actor Sam Neill tells the reader more than once in his graceful and hugely entertaining memoir that he is ‘a jobbing actor’:  he will say that he does it to feed himself and his family, about whom he is always loving and touchingly proud.  It soon becomes obvious to the reader, however, that while he has more than earned enough to put food on the table for family generations to come, he has also gained a world-wide reputation as a celebrated actor in a myriad different roles, from battling dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movies to dazzling 17^th century London as King Charles the Second.

            And he is also battling cancer.

            About which he writes baldly and bravely, with no trace of the ‘Poor-Me’s’, an indication of his upbringing in a loving but no-nonsense family.  Sam, baptised Nigel to his eternal regret after his birth in Ireland, was the second son of a New Zealand military officer  (‘your father,’ says an aunt in pointed reference to Sam. ‘Now he was a handsome man.’)  As proven by an absolutely stunning photo of Sam’s dad.  Sam’s mum was an equally photogenic young Englishwoman and, after producing daughter Juliet, the family eventually moved to Dunedin after a wonderful, wild start in Ireland, and Sam was despatched to the delights of boarding school in Christchurch.  Whether he wanted to go or not – ‘nothing wrong with a Boarding-School education, it’ll do you good!’ Or not.  As Sam was more academically inclined than sporty (he loved acting, surprise surprise!) he wasn’t regarded with great interest by his teachers. But.

            Fate intervenes, when after university Sam gets a job with the National Film Unit (‘New Zealand’s least cool film makers’) and he is eventually cast in ‘Sleeping Dogs’, a pioneering feature movie that interested people in Australia, and  was the start of His Brilliant Career.  Sam and the camera fell in love and have been thicker than thieves ever since.  Only his family is more well-loved than acting – and wine-making:  thanks to his superior ‘jobbing’ talents, Sam is also a vintner of some note – the Pinot Noir produced at Sam’s South Island Two Paddocks vineyard has an international reputation:  not bad for a weedy little kid called Nigel – who changed his name to Sam when he was small because all the best guys in cowboy movies were called Sam.

            The last word shall go to Sam’s little daughter Elena who visited him in his trailer when he was upholstered magnificently in his royal raiment as King Charles the Second:  Sam was waiting for her cries of admiration but all Elena could say was ‘but Daddy, where are the Dinosaurs?’ This was the perfect way to end a lovely book written by a gentleman, and a gentle man.  SIX STARS.       

 

Night Will Find You, by Julia Heaberlin.

 

          Vivvy Bouchet has had a number of disadvantages in her life as she grew up, not least being the daughter of a Psychic who gives readings true and false in an effort to support Vivvy and her elder sister Brigid;  they sometimes have to leave town in a hurry – especially when the body of a dead woman is exhumed in their back yard which their Mum claims to have foreseen:  this event signifies a big increase in income, but removes permanently any privacy they had growing up.  A shift to the Lone Star State of Texas, proud home of myriad conspiracy theorists and gun-toting Trumpsters is not the safe haven it could have been, and reaching adulthood for both girls is something of a triumph – especially as Vivvy has managed to achieve her childhood goal of becoming a respected scientist – an astrophysicist, no less, the pride of her small family.  There’s just a couple of things wrong with that rosy picture:  Vivvy is obsessive-compulsive, and she has inherited her mother’s doubtful gift of second sight.

            A very odd combination of a relentlessly factual scientific mind married to an equally unassailable group of ‘feelings’.  For that reason Vivvy works alone on her exploratory Space studies, supported by a prestigious university grant – until her brother-in-law Mike, a detective, asks for her psychic help with a group of photos he wants her to see:  could any of the subjects be still alive?  If they are dead, any vibes as to where their bodies are?

            Well.  Mike must be desperate if he is asking for her help, but he can’t ask his mother-in-law – she has recently died of natural causes, so Vivvy is the next-best thing.  And she proves her worth:  a three-year old girl who disappeared from her home eleven years ago is not dead, despite her mother being jailed for her ‘murder’.  She’s alive – but where?

            Julia Heaberlin has written a marvellous thriller – not just superior plotting and characters, but her ruthless honesty in depicting today’s America, that land of endless opportunity bogged down with misinformation, disinformation, climate deniers, and the podcasters and newscasters frothing at the mouth to spread more fantasies to people who want to believe – need to believe – in something, the more unbelievable, the better.  Through her heroic character Vivvy she lays bare illnesses that infect a proud country, in the meantime giving us, in the best thriller tradition, shock after shock as exposes bad guys we never suspected, and a glimpse of a MAGA world we’d rather not see. SIX STARS.