Book Review: The Son by Joe Nesbo
The Son by Jo Nesbø
Translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: May 13, 2014
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
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: prison staff, police, lawyers, a desperate priest—all of them focused on keeping him high and in jail. And all of them under the thumb of the Twin, Oslo’s crime overlord. As long as Sonny gets his dope, he’s happy to play the criminal and the prison’s in-house savior.
But when he learns a stunning, long-hidden secret concerning his father, he makes a brilliantly executed escape from prison—and from the person he’d let himself become—and begins hunting down those responsible for the crimes against him . . . The darkly looming question is: Who will get to him first—the criminals or the cops?
Jo NesbØ is a Norwegian author best known for his Harry Hole crime novels. However, The Son is a stand-alone novel and the first of his I’ve read. I became aware of NesbØ because one of my friends has been a huge fan of his for a long time. After reading this book, I can see why.
The Son is different from a typical mystery or crime novel in that the killer is known from the beginning and his motives are as well. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of suspense. As Sonny takes revenge on those who have wronged him, a greater mystery having to do with a mole in the police department unravels with plenty of twists and turns.
Another thing that made this different from the crime novels I’ve read is that Sonny, ostensibly the villain, is such a likeable guy. I was actually rooting for him most of the time. His personality was so unique. All of the characters in The Son are well-drawn. I also really liked the relationship between Simon Kefas, the detective pursuing Sonny, and Simon’s wife, Else.
Now that I’ve had a taste of NesbØ , I want to read the Harry Hole novels as well. I highly recommend this book to not just fans of Nordic crime novels but fans of any type of crime novel.
(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
