Domiciled in Hong Kong after his previous defence of the Oslo thin blue line, his return to Norway three years after his departure is not welcomed by the force he once served with. It had long grown tired of Harry's do it my way loner approach. The hierarchy, while basking in the glory of his successes, was never too eager to give him credit for his accomplishments, preferring instead to keep him at bottle's length. Something they could then use to flag up his unreliability due to a fondness for the bottle.
What sends him home, three years dry, and pushes him into another investigation is the predicament of Oleg, the son of his erstwhile partner, Rakel. Oleg has been accused of murder, and Harry despite his cynicism returns to the Norwegian capital to prove his innocence or at least satisfy himself that Oleg is guilty after all. With Oleg, both a junkie and pusher, having confessed his guilt, the defence is up against it to evade the bang of the gavel followed by the words take him down. Without police backing Harry assumes the hybrid persona of a private detective-cum-vigilante. Nor is he subject to normal police constraints.
In The Phantom Jo Nesbo has Harry switching lanes. In The Leopard, he was son to a dying dad, Now he has to assume the role of father to Oleg. A character broadening endeavour that adds flavour by creating more roles for Harry than the one dimensional nemesis of serial killers.
While Harry is the mainstay, other characters compete for the reader's attention, which helps ward off any staleness gaining a foothold on the ninth outing. Gusto Hanssen, the drug dealer Oleg stands accused of murdering, is one of the more captivating figures in the book. From shagging his foster mother to selling the most dangerous drug on the streets of Oslo, Gusto lived life on the edge, took a lot of risks and made enemies of the wrong people, including Dubai, the Russian gangster responsible for the distribution of Violin, which was essentially heroin on stilts: the higher up it takes the user, is reciprocated in the fall back down. The street sellers for some reason wear Arsenal shirts. Even if it is a convenient way for the customer to find a supplier, it must be just as easy for the cops to identify the entire network of street level pushers. Nesbo was a promising soccer player on the Norwegian circuit before an injury forced him to retire, so the thought just arises that there was something about the Gunners which he found objectionable!
Then there is the pilot who smuggles the drugs on his flights and the cops who pull strings to have the guilty deemed innocent. There is a lot going on in The Phantom.
For this book Nesbo did more research than for any other in the series. He sought to drill down into the dark underground of Oslo, its drug scene and crime gangs. He described it as the darkest, grimmest book in the Harry Hole series. Opening up with a rat trying to access her den to feed her noisy young only to find the entrance to her abode blocked by the not quite dead yet body of Gusto, the heartbeat of which she can sense. The rat makes a number of appearances throughout, serving to underscore the subterranean grime of the city.
The ninth book by Nesbo in the Harry Hole series, Harry fatigue has not shown its head. There is a magnetism to his character. Harry Bosch, the creation of Michael Connelly, has a similar draw. For me, the trick is not to binge read the series, leave a gap of maybe a year between each. Whatever reading strategy is employed, Nesbo is onto a winner with the Hole genre, having sold millions of books across the globe.
Joe Nesbo, 2012, The Phantom. Vintage Digital. ISBN-13: 978-1446484869
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