Hot tale by a cool cat

CRIME: The LeopardBy Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett Harvill Secker, 624pp. £12.99

‘THE NEXT Stieg Larsson” says the cover on the latest thriller from the Norweigan Jo Nesbø, and this is likely to irritate his fans no end. For to those who have devoured Nesbø’s previous five books, mostly set in Oslo and containing some of the most inventive killers and the most cunning cops, Nesbø is not the next Stieg Larsson. There is no comparison between the two Scandanvian crime writers: Nesbø is infinitely better.

His latest book comes just in time for fans who, since The Snowman's serial killer was brought to heel by detective Harry Hole back in 2010, have been dying for more murder and mayhem in the frozen north. And so here it is: The Leopard– 600 pages punctuated by most inventive killings, the victims a group of people with nothing in common save that they once spent a night together in a mountain hostel. Kripo, the new bureaucrats in town, haven't a clue what to do.

It’s time to call in Harry Hole.

Harry is the quintessential detective: battle-scarred, world-weary, chain-smoking, alcoholic but with a razor-sharp mind and, of course, fantastically attractive to women.

As the first young woman is dying a gruesome death in a cellar, courtesy of a torture instrument from Congo, Harry is hiding out in the opium dens of Hong Kong, owing money to the triads. That’s all about to end with the arrival of Kaja, a gorgeous female detective who’s been sent to fetch him.

But what about the love of his life, Rakel, and her charming son, Oleg, you ask? Well, Rakel had enough in The Snowmanand has disappeared to Amsterdam, leaving Harry strung out and heartbroken. Kaja persuades Harry to come home to visit his dying father, but soon he's drawn into the hunt for a killer up in snowy regions that we'll never be able to pronounce. In less than a day he has gotten closer to solving the crime than the entire crime squad and the Kripo have done in weeks, but he has a new adversary in a particularly slimy bureaucrat called Bellman, who has the usual boundless ambition but also a dark secret of his own.

By now The Leopardhas already clocked up three murders, including that of a female politician who loses her head while out jogging late one night, but not to worry: there are plenty more to come, and Nesbø doesn't spare the details as the story gallops along.

There are plenty of other strands to the story: Harry’s past is always there, his sister with Down syndrome, Sis, makes a cameo appearance and his old friend Øystein continues to drive his taxi while drunk and drugged.

Homage is paid here and there to other great horror yarns. For instance, when Harry visits his old adversary the Snowman, in his prison-hospital bed, he finds him suffering from a skin complaint that has reduced the skin on his face to a hideous mask a là Hannibal Lecter. And the terrifying scenes when the action switches to Congo have shades of Henning Mankell in them, though they’re better.

There are lots of good reasons to love Nesbø, who was once a major-league footballer, then became a chart-topping musician. He doesn’t try to blind with science or bore with ballistics. The killings are shocking but not senseless. The detective work is slow but very clever. You won’t see the killer a mile off, and there are as many red herrings as you might expect in that part of the world. No detail is wasted, so you must pay attention from page one if you want to understand the fabulously satisfying puzzle that is a Nesbø novel.

Orna Mulcahy is an Irish Timesjournalist