The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbø
452 pgs  (Harry Hole series #5)

The Devil's Star is the fifth installment in Norwegian author Jo Nesbø's crime series featuring detective Harry Hole. This time Harry is brought out of his alcohol-infused stupor to track down a serial killer in Oslo.

It begins when a young woman is found shot dead in her apartment. One of her fingers has been severed and a red star-shaped diamond is discovered under one of her eyelids. Five days later an actress goes missing. When her finger arrives at the police station wearing a ring with a red star-shaped diamond, Harry realizes more victims will likely follow. Sure enough, with the precision timing Scandinavians are known for, they do.

But finding and stopping the killer isn't the only thing Harry's trying to do. He's also trying to expose one of his colleagues, Tom Waaler, whom Harry believes is behind many of the illegal weapons being smuggled into Oslo. He also believes Waaler was behind the killing of Harry's former partner.

For those not familiar with the series, this one's probably not the one to start with. Not because it's not a good book. It's as good, if not better than it's four predecessors. But a reader would be better served getting to know Harry and his tumultuous life through the earlier books before reading The Devil's Star. It's also important to know the backstory between him and Waaler.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Saint of Wolves and Butchers

by Alex Grecian
388 pgs

The Saint of Wolves and Butchers is the first stand-alone novel by Alex Grecian. His previous four books were all part of his Victorian-era "Murder Squad Series," which follows the exploits of the officers who failed to capture Jack the Ripper, a series I've enjoyed a lot.

The book begins when Skottie Foster, a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper, pulls over a Jeep being driven by Travis Roan. Roan was sent to Kansas by the Noah Roan Foundation, an organization that hunts down former Nazis living in the United States and brings them to justice. Roan is following the trail of his father, who was sent there weeks ago to confirm a report of a sighting of a man named Rudolph Bormann, a Nazi doctor and assistant administrator of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp during World War II. No one has heard from Roan's father for quite some time, and Roan has been sent to first find out what became of him, and second, to find out whether the sighting of Bormann was legitimate.

It is revealed right away that Bormann is indeed living in rural Kansas now and going by the name of Rudy Goodman. he's the founder of a controversial right-wing church in the area and even at 94 years old, he's a powerful man in the community.

I was really hoping to enjoy The Saint of Wolves and Butchers more than I did. It's not a bad book by any mes. But it would have been a much better book had Grecian incorporated some twists or surprises in the plot. There's no mystery around who Rudy Goodman once was. And there's really no suspense regarding what his fate will eventually be. On top of that, Roan was a pretty boring protagonist. If this is the first book in a series featuring him, I don't think I'll continue reading it. I'm hoping Grecian quickly returns to the Murder Squad.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Outsider

by Stephen King
561 pgs

In his latest book The Outsider, Stephen King creates a seemingly impossible murder mystery. A teenage boy is savagely killed and the police quickly have no question about who killed him. Multiple reliable witnesses saw Terry Maitland, a local English teacher an popular Little League coach, with the boy right before the time of death. They saw him get into a van with the boy, the same van that soon turns up filled with the boy's blood and covered with Terry's fingerprints. DNA evidence matching Terry is found at the crime scene as well. There's so much evidence against Terry, and so much outrage over the nature of the murder, that Detective Ralph Anderson makes a public spectacle out of arresting Terry during the middle of one of his Little League games, in front of the whole town.

But Terry is adamant in proclaiming his innocence. He's a well-loved family man and an admired member of the community, and he claims he wasn't even in town the day of the murder. he was at a teachers' convention hundreds of miles away with a group of his colleagues at the school. All of them can attest to him being with them the night of the murder. There's even video proof of him being at the convention. In fact, there's just as much evidence of him being at the convention as there is of him being at the crime scene.

Who else but Stephen King could begin a story with a premise like that and then ride it to such a satisfying conclusion? No one.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆