The Thirst. Harry Hole 11 

Despite 'The Thirst' being the 11th book in Jo Nesbo's 'Harry Hole' series, it was not a problem for me to launch my acquaintance with the Norwegian crime stories here. The book itself is about a retired detective Hole that gets sucked into all of the action around a new, crazy blood-loving killer. It seems that Harry Hole has already met the bad guy before, but for a new reader this will not be a problem because all of the characters will be developed "from the beginning" of the crime novel and the writer won't leave you to guess of what was happening in the previous books.

The thing that gets readers' attention, apart from a mad fetish of the stalker and insane methods of the detective, is the unforeseen plot twist that happens once the reader thinks that all that could've been done (catching the bad-guy) is done and nothing else to do... and the plot twist happens twice!

'The Thirst' may catch an unprepared reader with many unique characters. This may be a tremendous problem for a slow reader that may be reading the book over a longer time interval (several months, the novel is actually long). However, on the other hand side it is more than entertaining to spectate many different story lines that run parallel and evolve differently. A miracle for nowadays fiction.

Overall, 'The Thirst' provides a modern reader a breath of fresh air due to its interesting and impossible-to-put-aside story arch written in plain, modern English (translation by Neil Smith). There are many different point of views on the story that's happening in Oslo from within the story itself which makes it interesting to investigate how characters react to different events. Plot twists will glue you to the novel. Harry Hole will make you fall in love with the books... even though you may have started not from the very beginning of the series. That's what happened to me.