Devil's star by Jo Nesbo - book review

Jo Nesbo - Latest addition to list of new authors I’ve started with. Though the series has been on the backburner for about 4 years now, when Brags first shared the list, I thought it was too dark and slow for my taste. But after getting accustomed to lot like Peter Swanson and Tudor, thought of giving it a try. Seems like, psychotic, dark, serial killer murder mysteries are toast of the town at the moment I guess. Probably, the popularity of such themes and topics, with their ingrained evil that is glorified all throughout in immaculate detailing, it has made the readers and general audience alike, numb towards such incidents when it happens in real life. An age old case of art mimicking real life or vice versa. But still, before reading these books, I thought people who make stories out of these should either be psychotic themselves or would’ve underwent/witnessed similar trauma in their own/relations life and predominantly they are recap of real life incidents. But the more commonplace, such dark themes happen and the ease with which more and more authors spin their yarn of imagination around such sickeningly evil themes, makes me yearn for Sherlock and his complexly simple cases. Agreed that they are as similar as chalk and cheese genre wise. Yet, in the name of thrillers, the kind of stories that are in circulation are really scary. Especially when you begin to think from the author’s point of view for inspiration!!!

Getting back to the book, Devil’s star is the first book that I read in the Jo Nesbo series involving Harry Hole, his policeman hero. Apparently it happens to be a middle part of a series involving Harry, for there are quite few throwbacks to what happened on previous installments and alongside the serial killer storyline, there is a parallel track of avenging the death of Harry’s friend. Probably I’ve been reading way too many novels with recurring theme of murder and how “innovative” the way in which the killings happen. Right after the third kill in the story, when the police are wondering on the motive, I felt somehow that the killings are way too perfect for such a small window within which the event had happened and it didn’t fit in. To my horror, when Harry arrives at similar reasoning for figuring out the actual perpetrator
I was stunned. High time to opt for a different lighter theme of books for study.

Gils verdict – For someone who is reading Jo Nesbo for the very first time, it felt, this book was written from title to end approach. I guess to justify the title, the serial killer character is created and is half baked with barely much detailing on the “how” part of the killings. The “why” sounds even stupider and doesn’t make sense. Originally the intent might just have been to create a story of how Harry avenges his friend’s death and to fill up the gap in page count, a serial killer portion has been thrown in. Might make a lousy episode on CSI or pretty soon some Malayalam director will make a suspense thriller out of this storyline, which will be copied by other language guys by default.