The Devil, You Say

January Magazine has just posted its review of The Devil’s Star, by Jo Nesbø, a novel that’s due for official release tomorrow by Harper. The piece, written by a new contributor to the mag, Gretchen Echols, begins:

It is a July hell in Oslo, the Norwegian city gripped in a blistering heat wave. A young woman is found dead with a bizarre mutilation to her body and an odd calling card from the murderer. Meanwhile, Harry Hole, one of the best detectives on the local police force, is in his own private hell--a month-long alcoholic binge. When he receives a call from his superior, Bjarne Møller, Hole is passed out on his living room floor, clutched in the throes of a recurring nightmare involving his sister and elevators.

Møller is desperate. The detective unit is understaffed because of holiday vacations. He has protected Hole by stalling on sending adverse reports of his erratic behavior to higher authorities, but now Hole is on the verge of dismissal. However, the only detectives left in the sweltering city with the ability and experience necessary to handle the mutilation case are Hole and his nemesis on the crime squad, Tom Waaler. Hole’s last chance to escape the implosion of his career, it seems, is to work this investigation with Waaler.

You’ll find the rest of Echols’ critique here.

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Meanwhile, British critic and novelist Mike Ripley has a new “Getting Away with Murder” column up in the e-zine Shots. Among the subjects he lauds, laments, or lampoons this month: unjustly forgotten thriller writer Gavin Lyall (The Most Dangerous Game); Geoffrey Jenkins’ supposedly missing James Bond novel, Per Fine Ounce; “the first children’s book to be authorized by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle”; the latest titles in Ostara Publishing’s Top Notch Thriller series of print-on-demand classics, chosen by none other than Ripley himself; and the death last month of jockey-turned-crime novelist, Dick Francis.

Click here to read Ripley’s column in its entirety.

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Finally (for now), if you’re looking for more good stuff to read this week, don’t miss “The Redemption of Tom Chatham,” by Tucson writer Garnett Elliott, in Beat to a Pulp. Could this herald the comeback of pirate tales in popular fiction?