E-book
The leopard [electronic resource] / Jo Nesbø ; translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett.
After two young women are found dead, both drowned in their own blood, Inspector Harry Hole is compelled to return to Norway to see his dying father and to investigate the brutal crime, which may be the work of a serial killer.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780307958778 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 0307958779 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 9780307359742 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 0307359743 (electronic bk.)
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (517 p.)
- Edition: 1st U.S. ed.
- Publisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.
Content descriptions
| Source of Description Note: | Description based on print version record. |
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| Genre: | Mystery fiction. Electronic books. Fiction. |
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Electronic resources
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2011 December #1
*Starred Review* Oslo police detective Harry Hole, Nesbø's obsessive hero, jumps on and off the wagon with all the manic intensity of a kid riding a pogo stick. This time, after the horrendous events detailed in The Snowman (his lover, Rakel, and her son taken captive by a serial killer), Harry's self-flagellating leap off the wagon has carried him from Oslo to Hong Kong, where he is mixing his opium and his Scotch with reckless, delirium-inducing abandon. However, back in Oslo, Harry's father is dying, and another serial killer is on the loose. Lured by the formerâhe professes disinterest in the latterâHarry returns to Norway, takes a hiatus from booze and dope, and lands in the middle of multiple messes, not all of his own making. There's the matter of sorting out his feelings for his father and his tangled past, including the still-open sore of losing Rakel yet again; there's the question of new feelings for a fellow detective, Kaja; there's the interdepartmental power struggle in which he seems to have become a pawn; and, yes, there's the serial killer, a particularly nasty fellow who employs all manner of despicable tools to dispatch his victims. Harry can't resist the lure of an impregnable puzzle, of course, and soon his obsessive self is on the rampage. Just as we wonder if Nesbø finally has played out the theme of Harry versus his demons (inner and outer), we are sucked in again, drawn by the specter of a good man undone by a bad world and a too-sensitive soul. What Harry craves, he tells us, is "an armored heart." We could use one, too, if we ever hope to turn away from the adventures of crime fiction's most tortured and compelling hero. Alas, no armor exists strong enough to keep Harry from his demons, or the rest of us from Harry. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Nesbo's books have been translated into 40 languages and sold more than eight million copies worldwide. This one stands to up the ante one more time. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews. - Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews - Audio And Video Online Reviews 1991-2018
Norwegian police detective Harry Hole pursues a serial killer who utilizes a lethal device known as "Leopold's apple" in this thriller that takes us from Norway to Africa and back. Hole has to be dragged home to Oslo from Hong Kong, where he has been exploring the charms of opium and sampling savory local foods while trying to decompress from his last case, detailed in The Snowman (also available from Books on Tape and read by Sachs). In this novel, Hole's father is gravely ill and another serial killer is at large. Sachs' understated reading of the thoughts and words of Hole's adversary (initially we don't know who is manifesting these thoughts) enhances the suspense and horror that dominate the story. Frequent references to the characters' linguistic differences requires Sachs to express various regional shadings of Norwegian dialects. He also gives Hole's ruminations an occasional sense of panic and resolve in this riveting tale. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2011 November #2
Another spooky gothic by Norwegian gloomster Nesbø (The Snowman, 2011, etc.), the poet laureate of boreal psychopathy. If there were a dictionary-definition image for numbed world-weariness, Oslo detective Harry Hole would be it, in just the way that Edvard Munch's The Scream is the canonical image of terror. (When the film is made, only the Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd of Insomnia will do.) As Nesbø's newest procedural opens, Hole has taken himself into a Hong Kong exile, where he ponders the smog that builds up thicker and thicker from mainland China and fills his own modest room with the smoke from his opium water pipe. Enter Kaja Solness, Oslo gumshoe extraordinaire, who needs to find him immediately. Naturally, something very ugly has happened back home; a murder bloody enough to make a Viking of yore lose his lunch has occurred, involving a cruel instrument of torture that shoots out metal spikes: "Two needles pierced the windpipe and one the right eye, one the left. Several needles penetrated the rear part of the palate and reached the brain." Yuck. Only Hole, it seems, can divine the mind of someone sick enough to pull off such a thing, and once Hole, plagued by the memories of earlier murders and a constant craving for drink and smoke, is pulled into the case early on in the novel, it's all a go-go-go rush across the continents: Europe, of course, and Asia, but also Africa, where an ugly war is raging off in some backwater of the Congo and where, it develops, a person of interest is conducting a nasty trade. It is vintage Nesbø to throw in red herrings and MacGuffins, but also to have Hole engage in a little John Wooâstyle dance, cop and suspect, in which the bad guy has a definite chance of taking out the good one. Nesbø's formula includes plenty of participation by Kaja, a very capable woman, and plenty of current geopolitical backdrop, making Nesbø a worthy mysterian-cum-social-critic in the Stieg Larsson tradition. But will good prevail? It's anything but a foregone conclusion. Good for a nightmare or three--a taut, fast-paced thriller with wrenching twists and turns. Copyright Kirkus 2011 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2012 March #2
Following the intensity of events in Nesbø's previous novel, The Snowman, Inspector Harry Hole has literally and figuratively run away from home. Harry hides in Hong Kong's underbelly, drowning his sorrows and painful memories. He only reluctantly returns home to Oslo after two women are violently killed and his father lay on his deathbed, both events demanding Harry's attention and singular expertise. Nesbø's exceptionally dark, detailed, and visual writing makes this a quintessential thriller. Enhanced by the cinema-worthy performance of narrator Robin Sachs, this audio rendering of The Leopard suggests continual images in the listener's imagination. VERDICT Those adoring the work of Norwegian writers Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell will enjoy Nesbø's tales; fans of the detailed procedurals of Ian Rankin and Patricia Cornwell also will be enthralled. ["This vivid, violent novel promises to speak on many levels to many readers and will be snatched up by Scandinavian crime fiction fans," read the review of the New York Times best-selling Knopf hc, LJ 11/1/11.âEd.]âNicole A. Cooke, Montclair State Univ. Lib., NJ
[Page 82]. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. - LJ Express Reviews : LJ Express Reviews
Any author who starts his book with a graphic, sadistic murder and expects us to follow the story down to the denouement over 500 pages later better know what he's doing. Luckily, Nesbø knows exactly what he's doing. In this gripping, intricately plotted tale, Norwegian detective Harry Hole (The Snowman; Redbird) has to battle a new enemy-the impending death of his father-as well as the usual suspects: one (or more?) pathological killers, natural dangers, tribal warriors of very different types on two continents, internecine warfare within the Oslo police department, and, most of all, himself. But like all intelligent crime fiction, this book is not only about multiple murders by heinous means. It is also about legacies, most specifically about the good and evil, love and hate, passed from one generation to the next. Verdict This vivid, violent novel promises to speak on many levels to many readers and will be snatched up by Scandinavian crime fiction fans. [150,000-copy first printing.]-David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ., Institute (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2011 November #1
Any author who starts his book with a graphic, sadistic murder and expects us to follow the story down to the denouement over 500 pages later better know what he's doing. Luckily, Nesbø knows exactly what he's doing. In this gripping, intricately plotted tale, Norwegian detective Harry Hole (The Snowman; Redbird) has to battle a new enemy-the impending death of his father-as well as the usual suspects: one (or more?) pathological killers, natural dangers, tribal warriors of very different types on two continents, internecine warfare within the Oslo police department, and, most of all, himself. But like all intelligent crime fiction, this book is not only about multiple murders by heinous means. It is also about legacies, most specifically about the good and evil, love and hate, passed from one generation to the next. Verdict This vivid, violent novel promises to speak on many levels to many readers and will be snatched up by Scandinavian crime fiction fans. [150,000-copy first printing.]-David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ., Institute (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
