The Leopard: Grusome
Here comes The Leopard, by hot shot flavor of the month—the Nebuchadnezzar of Nordic Noir, Jo Nesbø.
Now Mr Nesbø, is the author of the serial killer schlocker The Snowman, which is not exactly Crimezines cup of fijord flavored hot-fondue. But legendary filmmaker Martin Score-sleazy is in disagreement, and he has decided to make The Snowman into a movie [As Exclusively reported in Crimezine] Well, hurrah to that! We are sure Marty will tune up the story considerably.
Crimezine has been impressed by previous Nesbø efforts, The Devils Star and The Red Breast and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these tales to Crimeziners everywhere.
Why then should The Leopard be any different? We hear you ask. Well— fans of films such as The Saw, Final Destination and the charming Hostel series, will no doubt love this book.
But for others, this bloated shock fest of serial killer torture and mindless splatter core pukiness will have you chocking into a barf-bag after page four, and this gory-borey tome is five hundred —count ’em—pages long.
No doubt you will hear marketeers try and convince you that Jo Nesbø is the new Stieg, Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Larson. This is not true. He is Thomas Harris with a chainsaw and a tool-kit full of sharpened screwdrivers.
So what of the story? Well, Harry Hole has made an opium-smoking sojourn to Hong Kong, after his gruesome encounter with The Snowman, only to be persuaded back to Norway by the piranha toothed Kaja, who tells him his father is dying. What follows is a web of inane chat, dumb gags and half-baked memories, from touchy feely childhoods, that it’s hard to give a damn about.
Layered throughout this, we get a collection of gruesome torture killings seemingly related to a meeting at a ski-lodge. Confusion reigns. The plot is by turn nonsensical, then preposterous, and just when you think respite is heading your way, Harry heads to the Congo, where further scenes of carnage ensue: rape, gore, genocide, mutilation. But all is not lost Crimeziners. Heroic Harry Hole rushes to the rescue, saving the innocents who are the subject of his mission of mercy from death in a fiery Volcano. We kid you not. We hoped Tarzan would swing in to cheer things up. Unfortunately he never did.
Jo Nesbø can do much better than this, his public expects it and so does Crimezine.
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