Phantom
by Jo Nesbo, Fiction (Released October, 2012)
Bottom Line: Skip it.
Summary: Detective Harry Hole returns to Oslo from Hong Kong to try to prove that his former girlfriend’s son, Oleg, is innocent of murdering his drug dealer friend, Gusto.
My Thoughts: If you read my review of Nesbo’s The Leopard, you may remember that Nesbo was billed by some as being similar to Stieg Larsson. Phantom is the third book of the Harry Hole series that I’ve read and, including Phantom, I’ve been disappointed twice. The beginning of the book is completely confusing and I almost put it down after 50 pages. Nesbo starts each thread of the story without using any character names and includes the perspective of a rat at the murder scene, which totally lost me. Gusto’s “dying thoughts” is one of these threads, which actually does add to the story later in the book, but these segments are a mess in the beginning. I thought things got better through the middle, but slid downhill again as Nesbo explained and then discarded most of the potential solutions to the mystery. There were so many twists, I found myself forgetting whether a certain character had been eliminated from suspicion for Gusto’s murder.  And, the nail in Phantom‘s coffin is that I absolutely despised the ending. Though I love Harry Hole as a character, I think I’m done with Nesbo’s books for awhile.

Have you read Phantom?  Tell us what you thought (without spoilers!) in the comments section.