Midnight Sun

by Jo Nesbø
273 pgs

I get excited when an author, who writes a series I follow, comes out with a stand-alone book. It's ice to be introduced to a new character, with the understanding that everything the author is ever going to tell you about him or her is contained in this one single book. Nesbø, who has his fantastic series featuring Norwegian police detective Harry Hole, has done this a few times now.

Midnight Sun begins when Jon Hansen, who goes by "Ulf," gets off a bus in a small town near the Arctic Ocean in Norway. He's a small-time hashish dealer, who only began dealing in order to feed his own use of the drug, and he's living on the run, hiding from killers hired by a powerful drug lord known as the Fisherman he double crossed. Ulf is hoping this small town, where the sun doesn't set for six months of the year, will provide an ideal place for him to disappear.

But Ulf isn't there long before he begins to become infatuated with Lea, the daughter of the town's minister, and fond of her ten-year-old son Knut. They're devout members of the fundamentalist Lutheran sect in town, which makes for an interesting dynamic between them as their relationship grows, and it's their relationship that Nesbø places at the center of his story. Even as the action picks up and the Fisherman's men begin to close in on Ulf, his relationship with Lea and Knut remain the biggest part of Nesbø's story.

Midnight Sun is a quick, enjoyable book. Like Blood on Snow, Nesbø's last stand-alone book, it's shorter than any of the Harry Hole books, and focuses more on the relationships between characters than on the mysteries surrounding a crime. But it still showcases Nesbø's ability to tell a great story.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆