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Books like Carambole

Carambole

2012Håkan Nesser

4.9/5

'Life is a tangle of remarkable connections.'My first Nesser and I wonder how he's managed to evade me till now - thanks Jola and Rachel for correcting this! As someone who gets very grumpy when faced with the more gothic and spectacularly melodramatic end of the crime spectrum (insane psychopaths driven by pop-psychology explanations of childhood trauma, serial killers who commit murders by tying their victims to giant clock mechanisms in order to tear them apart...), this book suited me perfectly with its normality. Make no mistake, there are some horrible killings here but they're rendered all the more impactful precisely because of the way the narrative doesn't detract from them by over-accessorising. Nesser's prose is bare and pared-back throughout, but his police team are given real lives, histories and personalities - even though I've come to the series mid-way through, it's clear from the banter and personal interactions that they continue to 'live' outside of, and between, the books. The plot itself is an unusual one - one which is focalised alternatively via the killer and the police. Despite it not following a conventional whodunnit formula, the narrative remains tense and a page-turner as we watch the police catching up with, and filling the gaps in, the story we've at least partly seen for ourselves. Making use of chaos theory and pacing its revelations, this is an adult book in that it swaps gore and B-list 'twists' for something all the more chilling precisely because we can kind of understand how everything happens in a dark, nightmarish way. Hakan Nesser, I'm glad I've found you!

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