THE REDEEMER by Jo Nesbo

This is my first Jo Nesbo thriller, and I found it to be a little challenging.  Not only are the Norwegian names sometimes hard to keep up with, but as each section ends and another begins, the setting changes as well, and the he or she in the narration is someone entirely different from the character in previous section.  Sometimes I figured out who the author was tracking, and sometimes the author provides a name or some other clue.  Then there are other times when you don’t know who was being referenced until the book wraps up.  I don’t know if this abrupt shift in narration is a hallmark of Nesbo’s work or if it is something he tried in this novel only.  This is basically a murder mystery involving a Croatian hitman and a cast of characters who work for the Salvation Army, plus Harry Hole and the Oslo police, of course.  Since they have military ranks in the Salvation Army (is that true here, too?), I sometimes confused them with the police officers.  All of my disorientation aside, the big question is who hired the hitman, and I never would have figured that out.  Some of the side mysteries were a little easier to solve, despite the author’s heavy-handed attempts to lead the reader in the wrong direction.  Inspector Harry Hole is the heart of the story, with an estranged wife and a problem with alcohol.  Too many of this type of novel, and not just the Scandinavian ones, have a melancholy detective with a boatload of flaws.  Except for his line of work, the assassin is in many ways more sympathetic than Harry Hole.  This ambivalence that the author apparently intends with regard to the hitman is probably the best thing about this novel.