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Sonny Lofthus is a strangely charismatic and complacent young man. Sonny’s been in prison for a dozen years, nearly half his life. The inmates who seek out his uncanny abilities to soothe leave his cell feeling absolved. They don’t know or care that Sonny has a serious heroin habit - or where or how he gets his uninterrupted supply of the drug. Or that he’s serving time for other peoples’ crimes. Sonny took the first steps toward addiction when his father took his own life rather than face exposure as a corrupt cop. Now Sonny is the seemingly malleable center of a whole infrastructure of corruption....
Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country. The victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect.
In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson's cover version of The Winter's Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology, and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.
Stavern, 1983. After a brutal robbery, a young policeman named William Wisting is edged off the investigation by more experienced officers, but soon he is on another case that has not even been recognised as murder. Forgotten in a dilapidated barn stands a bullet-riddled old car, and it looks as if the driver did not get out alive. This case will shape William Wisting as a policeman and give him insight that he will carry with him for the rest of his career.
A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk, the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in "the shadow district", a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now?
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the best-selling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful.
Sonny Lofthus is a strangely charismatic and complacent young man. Sonny’s been in prison for a dozen years, nearly half his life. The inmates who seek out his uncanny abilities to soothe leave his cell feeling absolved. They don’t know or care that Sonny has a serious heroin habit - or where or how he gets his uninterrupted supply of the drug. Or that he’s serving time for other peoples’ crimes. Sonny took the first steps toward addiction when his father took his own life rather than face exposure as a corrupt cop. Now Sonny is the seemingly malleable center of a whole infrastructure of corruption....
Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country. The victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect.
In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson's cover version of The Winter's Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology, and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.
Stavern, 1983. After a brutal robbery, a young policeman named William Wisting is edged off the investigation by more experienced officers, but soon he is on another case that has not even been recognised as murder. Forgotten in a dilapidated barn stands a bullet-riddled old car, and it looks as if the driver did not get out alive. This case will shape William Wisting as a policeman and give him insight that he will carry with him for the rest of his career.
A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk, the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in "the shadow district", a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now?
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the best-selling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful.
In a Stockholm city park, police discover the hideously abused body of a young boy. Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg heads the investigation, battling an apathetic prosecutor and a bureaucratic police force unwilling to devote resources to solving the murder of a nameless immigrant child. But with the discovery of two more mutilated children's corpses, it becomes clear that a serial killer is at large.
Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn.
From the best-selling author of Cry Baby, the beginning of a brilliant and gripping police procedural series set in Liverpool, perfect for fans of Peter James and Mark Billingham. A woman at home in Liverpool is disturbed by a persistent tapping at her back door. She's disturbed to discover the culprit is a raven and tries to shoo it away. Which is when the killer strikes. DS Nathan Cody, still bearing the scars of an undercover mission that went horrifyingly wrong, is put on the case.
When terrorists use a drone to bring down a plane on one of London’s busiest shopping centres, it ignites a chain of events that will draw in the innocent and the guilty alike. DC Max Wolfe finds himself caught in the crossfire between a tech-savvy terrorist cell and a revenge-seeking, Bible-quoting murderer called Bad Moses.
For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch - hero, maverick, nighthawk - the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal. The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell.
Anna Fox lives alone - a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times...and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble. And its shocking secrets are laid bare.
Adrian McKinty was born in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied politics and philosophy at Oxford before moving to America in the early 1990s. Living first in Harlem, he found employment as a construction worker, barman, and bookstore clerk. In 2000 he moved to Denver to become a high school English teacher and it was there that he began writing fiction.
The producer of a troubled play invites the cast to spend the weekend in his remote Scottish Highlands estate to hash out the problems. When the housemaid finds the playwright murdered in bed, Thomas Lynley and his partner must unmask the villain.
All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He is the "King of Manhattan North", a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force". Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest - an elite special unit given carte blanche to fight gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the 18 years he's spent on the job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps.
Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.
British pilots James Teasdale and Bryan Young have been chosen to conduct a special photo-reconnaissance mission near Dresden, Germany. Intelligence believes the Nazis are building new factories that could turn the tide of the war. When their plane is shot down, James and Bryan know they will be executed if captured. With an enemy patrol in pursuit, they manage to jump aboard a train reserved for senior SS soldiers wounded on the eastern front.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
With Headhunters, Jo Nesbø has crafted a funny, dark, and twisted caper story worthy of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers.
Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter, and he’s a master of his profession. But one career simply can’t support his luxurious lifestyle and his wife’s fledgling art gallery. At an art opening one night, he meets Clas Greve, who is not only the perfect candidate for a major CEO job, but also, perhaps, the answer to his financial woes: Greve just so happens to mention that he owns a priceless Peter Paul Rubens painting that’s been lost since World War II - and Roger Brown just so happens to dabble in art theft. But when he breaks into Greve’s apartment, he finds more than just the painting. And Clas Greve may turn out to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to Roger Brown.
The narrator talks intimately into your ear. You feel as if he is telling a story and speaking only to you. An unusual audio style that's a little disconcerting initially...I wasn't quite sure I was going to continue. But then the story started happening so seductively...so subtlety.. with clever and alluring dialogue that sucks you in and before you know what's happening,you are hooked.
It is not a Harry Hole book, this is something quite different. The story is fascinating and unexpected......don't think for a moment you know where it is going. Pay attention!! it will be worth it.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful
I really liked this book; it is the first I have read by Nesbo. I can't help but compare it to the great Stieg Larrson trilogy (both Larrson and Nesbo are from Nordic countries and write similar genre). In a nutshell I would say it was as riveting as "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo" series only without all the SLOW spots. It almost felt like I was reading an abridged version of a Larrson novel. There were a few hokie parts, but it was far less predictable... in fact, every time I thought I had it figured out, something changed...right up until the last chapter or two. The narration was not the best I have heard, but certainly not the worst. I plan on looking up this author in the future.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful
What did you like best about Headhunters? What did you like least?
There were some interesting twists. There was nobody to really root for and a fairly simple story reall dragged on.
Would you recommend Headhunters to your friends? Why or why not?
Probably not. Any Harry Hole novel is much better and I believe better written.
Did the narration match the pace of the story?
Yes.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
No
Any additional comments?
Jo, stick to Harry Hole.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
I liked this book a lot, but there are several key twists that I was sure I missed just by not paying attention. After reviewing those moments, I realized had I been reading the book I'd most likely have paid more attention to the clues. Nevertheless it is a really good mystery.
There are many slyly humorous moments that the reader, Steve West, pulls off brilliantly. His work on this book makes it a 4 star listen.
There are some curious points I'd love to ask the author about. Why was it necessary for one of the characters to be a thief at all? And how is it possible for cheating spouses to simply shrug off their infidelities? Even in Norway I found that remarkably trite.
Some of the reviews mention the over the top violence, but I found it more like the severe type of survival situation similar to the man trapped by a landslide who had to cut his own arm off.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful
After meeting Nesbo with his Snowman, I was hooked. Now five of his books later, I think Headhunters is even better, his best to date. Creative, well-researched and loaded with twists and turns. If you like a gripping, sophisticated mystery, you need tackle this one. Heartily recommend!
11 of 12 people found this review helpful
The story was phenomenal. All kinds of plots and twists that were unexpected but, somehow, plausible. The reader was great -- making the main character as unlikeable and icy cold as I am sure Jo Nesbo meant him to be. I have listened to all the available Jo Nesbo books now and can't wait for the next one.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful
Would you try another book from Jo Nesbø and/or Steve West?
I have read all the Harry Hole books pending the next one soon to be released Narrator was fine.
Would you be willing to try another book from Jo Nesbø? Why or why not?
See above.
What about Steve West’s performance did you like?
Just read the book. Sounded just like it would sound in my head reading the print edition. No overdone drama and exclamation.
Do you think Headhunters needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
No. The protagonist is not an action hero, liking for his next conquest (although he's portrayed that way at some points).
Any additional comments?
Too many narrow escapes and far too much toughness from a "regular guy" character--understand it is his desperation propelling him to all these feats of strength and skill, but not believable. It's also too much luck that he finds a razor in the car.
Watch the movie (after reading the book) ! (It's on Netflix.) Rarely seen a film so faithfully follow the plot details of the book (subject to certain things being chopped to keep it feature film length).
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
I miss Jo Nesbo. I miss the way his quiet prose would unsettle you. I miss his subtlety. I miss the characters I could care about and follow. I miss his unerring plotting. I miss how he could always surprise me. I hope he comes back soon. But he did not show up for this novel.
Headhunters is the story of a corporate headhunter who steals a client's priceless work of art. Then the client starts hunting him. I know, it sounded fun and I know Jo Nesbo has produced some of the best fiction of the last decade with his Harry Hole novels. But this is a dry, rambling, experiment of a novel without significant twist or plot. The characters were wholly unlikable and the writing repetitive. The narrator was ok, without deep emotion but also without much to work with.
Please read Jo Nesbo - just not this.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
I've read other novels by Jo Nesbo and this one is unlike the others.This book was frightening without being gory. The darker side of human nature is shown The characters are all unlikeable but compelling. The story is beautifully developed and suspenseful. I highly recommend it as a literary thriller.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Where does Headhunters rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Top 10.
What other book might you compare Headhunters to and why?
Without Remorse by Tom Clancy. A man with particular skills against an ugly force. Mistakes and triumphs. Resolution and suffering. Shaped by their experiences but at their core they remain the same person.
Which scene was your favorite?
Graver's talk about his military experiences. You can feel the aggression and mysteriousness. It is a treat to see Brown attempt to regain his footing after trying to apply mechanical tactics to a monster like Graver. The conversation was like watching a boxer attempt defend against combination after combination. All the while illustrating Graver's personality and capabilities. It also humanizes Roger a bit because up until this point, minus a few admitted weaknesses, he is basically a god to us.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes. Absolutely. Excellent pacing. I just wanted to know what was happening next. Needed to know.
Any additional comments?
I saw the movie first. Years ago. So it ruined a few of the surprises for me me but this was still QUITE enjoyable.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful