Leopard by Jo Nesbo - book review

Luckily, I am stumbling in sequence, while reading this series till now. The story takes over from SNOWMAN and probably was written with the same flow and thought process I guess. Pretty racy and the story moves so fast that, before you realize there are 3 murders already and the initial setup and with a villain on maniac mode, it all leads up for an interesting climax. The story begins with a SAW (psycho killer movie) like setup where a lady is killed by Leopold’s Apple. Probably Nesbo spent quite some research about this torture device I guess. Its referenced multiple times and is almost mentioned in reverence(!!) There is another rifle that makes constant appearance across many stories. It works if you read the series in continuance, for it reiterates the similar setup, be it the bar they frequent, the repeated characterizations like smoking, alcoholic behavior, climate, above all – how tall Harry is(which is a near constant trivia in all the books!!) over a period of time, you get yourself familiarized with the landscape and the kind of characters involved. For those who read the series back to back, it is a tough ask to start with and when persisted, it eases out.

Why the title Leopard is anybody’s guess. Maybe there is no direct meaning for the original title and the closest it could be matched on translation was this animal. But the translation, for good parts of the book was pretty decent and racy. As with all his books, Nesbo stretches the limit in this one as well and a good portion of around 100 pages could’ve been chopped off without hindering the flow or the storyline. In SNOWMAN there was a strong motive behind those serial killings, which is absent in this edition. The actual reason behind all those murders sounds childish to say the least. Not that you need to have a brain tingling reason to kill anyone, but the extent to which the villain goes in eliminating the people, the reason felt a huge let down. Also, the ending was pretty confusing as to what was happening. The ease with which the investigative team tracks someone to and fro from another nation, tracing them to the very doorstep where they bought the murder weapon is laughably simple as compared to the painstaking detective work done by police in Higashino novels. But having said all these, the novel does have its moments and makes a better read as compared to some really slow and boring stories in the series. One constant feedback that I find about the series is its sheer size. Having it as a paperback and finishing it would be a herculean task I would believe!! Considering that there are repeat characters and setup, ideally, the volume should only go down and not increase. At times, the conversations threads lead nowhere and most of the grand reveals and break through are out of sheer luck than any interesting investigative approach.

I am into the next one in this series – Phantom and its much worse as compared against any of them in the series. Probably would put stop to this pretty soon.