He has found this bar in Laurel Canyon. He’s drawn to this place because of the music tradition there. He finds a bar close to the home of Frank Zappa and is about to successfully complete his plan when something happens. One of my two grumbles are that the ending stretches credibility so much that I defy you to not think "Oh for God's sake." It's possible to enjoy the denouement, because at least one newspaper review I read loved it, but to me it was... just silly. This is one of the darkest entries in the series, with a serial killer whose methods are inventively macabre even by Nesbo's standards. But with Harry in the unfamiliar role of private eye, assembling an eccentric team to help him, and rubbing his old police colleagues up the wrong way, it's also one of the most fun Daily Express Two young women are missing. Strangers to each other, but last seen at the same party. When the body of one of them is found with fresh stitches along her hairline, the hunt is on to find a murderer with singular methods. We know who the killer is; he calls himself, “Prim”; he has his own point of view in the novel. Eventually both of the girls’ bodies are found and Markus Roed’s wife is also murdered. This guy really hates Roed and wants to frame him. Later we find out why.

Two women are missing, their only connection being they attended the same party, hosted by a notorious real-estate magnate. When one of the women is found murdered, the police discover an unusual signature left by the killer, giving them reason to suspect he will strike again. Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.But Harry has ulterior motives for wanting to solve this case and, if he fails, there could be more than one life at risk. He wrote his first Harry Hole novel, The Bat, in Australia while taking a break from work and this was published in Norway in 1997. But it wasn’t until 2005 that he was finally published in the UK, when the fifth Hole book, The Devil’s Star, was released, just as the popularity of Nordic Noir soared after the success of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Jo Nesbø is one of today's most interesting thriller writers, and Harry Hole is an all-time great character - for me, a 100% buy-today-read-tonight delight. Lee Child Killing Moon is not just an unbearably tense thriller but another of Nesbø’s studies in love and loneliness. At his best, as he is here, there are few greater crime writers.” He'll need to bring together a misfit team of former operatives to do what he can't do alone: stop an unstoppable killer. But as the evidence mounts, it becomes clear that there is more to this case than meets the eye... But Harry carried on walking towards him. Became aware he was still holding the credit card in his right hand. Was this how it ended? In a dusty parking lot in a foreign country, bathed in sunlight, broke, and half drunk, while trying to do what he hadn’t been able to do for his mother, hadn’t been able to do for any of those he’d ever cared about? In past interviews, Nesbo has said that it’s important that he depicts the murders of women in his fiction because it’s an honest reflection of what happens in the real world. I’d counter with this question: Where is the value in perpetuating the idea of women as victims, in need of a mediocre old man to play hero?Now I am writing more at home, which is kind of sad, actually. I kind of liked the fact I had to go out among people to write.” KILLING MOON is the 13th novel in the Harry Hole series, although each title reads as a standalone. The seventh in the Hole series, The Snowman, was adapted into a Hollywood film starring Michael Fassbender as Harry, alongside Silo star Rebecca Ferguson and Top Gun ace Val Kilmer. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. I don’t know why that is. I guess it’s easier to create a universe inside your head if that universe is more attractive than the universe you are sitting in.”

Killing Moon is a magnificent concoction. It is beyond fantastic and is one of the greatest crime novels I have ever read. And I have read thousands.” It is sitting there in the middle of the room. What I do is sit on a small table close to the wall, where I look directly into the wall and write there instead.What’s more likely, I think, is that after writing thirteen books with more than 55 million copies sold, Nesbo (a former economist) has identified a formula that sells. So we get the brutal scalping of a young girl, which is going to be solved by an alcoholic mess of a detective who somehow scrapes his ugly face off the bar to magically solve a crime because, despite all evidence to the contrary, he’s still a genius. It’s the formula. He almost closed his eyes and squeezed his fingers around the credit card, so his hand formed a chisel. The case is a baffling one with all sorts of strange dimensions to it. The body of one of the young women is found and the mutilation suggests she was the victim of a serial killer. She’s half naked, her brain has been removed, there are no forensic traces to go on… Katrine Bratt and her team begin working with Sung-min Larsen of the national crime agency, Kripos. She wishes Harry were on board but as he’s joined the dark side by working for Røed the police hierarchy are not impressed. However, Harry is certain that Røed has a great deal to hide.

Two young women are missing in Oslo. Strangers to each other, but last seen at the same party. When the body of one of them is found with fresh stitches along her hairline, the hunt is on to find a murderer with singular compulsions. Catching this criminal calls for a detective with a singular mind: Harry Hole. A battered hero, a memorably creepy villain, a series of false endings worthy of Jeffery Deaver: What’s not to love? Before becoming a crime writer, Nesbo played football for Norway’s premier league team Molde, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di Derre (‘Them There’). They topped the charts in Norway, but Nesbo continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel, The Bat. On his side of the investigation, Harry assembles a team that includes his old ally, profiler Ståle Aune, who is dying of cancer. Aune’s hospital room becomes Harry’s base of operations. In the unlikeliest team-up ever, corrupt cop Truls Berntsen, a favourite in Police, becomes Harry’s ally. Plus, there’s Harry’s old schoolmate Øystein, a taxi driver and reformed drug dealer. The camaraderie of this team is one of the most pleasing aspects of the book – a counter to Harry’s angst, grief and battle with alcoholism. I have seen where Stephen King sits when he is writing and it is exactly the same. He has this big house and he goes into this small room that looks like a closet and he can write there.

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Jo Nesbo is an author who strives for originality when it comes to setting up a climax, and in Killing Moon he delivers a belter during a late summer lunar eclipse over Oslo. There are multiple paths of peril for the characters, and just when you think everything has become clear, the ground shifts. I didn’t figure out who the killer was, although you’re likely cleverer than I am and might well do so early on. Finally, there’s a thread in this novel that strongly suggests a 14th book is on the way – here’s hoping it won’t take four years to materialise! Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. Asked if that means he now uses the desk in his home office, he says: “That is the only place I can’t write. I have this beautiful desk that I imported, that I bought for a ridiculous amount of money.