Nesbo doubles down on the noir of Scandi-noir, taking a detour into horror.
Richard Elauved is 14 years old and fostered with his aunt and uncle after the death of his parents. He’s an angry outsider who doesn’t have many friends. One friend, Tom, goes with him to a phone box and Richard convinces Tom to make a prank call. When Tom goes missing, Richard tells the police that Tom was gruesomely sucked into the phone. This is naturally met with disbelief. When another friend, Jack, disappears, Richard is hounded by the police.
The novel is in three parts. The first covers Richard’s time at school, with the police accusing him of killing both Tom and Jack. He tracks the mysterious Imu Jonasson (whose phone number Tom called) to the Mirror Forest and the creepy, titular house, before being sent into juvenile detention at Rorrim (Mirror’s anadrome). In the second part, 15 years after his friends’ deaths, Richard returns to school for a reunion. He wants to apologise to his classmates for his bullying, but with one of them now owning the night house, the tables are turned on Richard.
The third part is a possible explanation of this nightmare … but can Richard’s narration be trusted? He’s being treated for mental illness with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
These three parts echo Edgar Allan Poe’s, ‘dream within a dream’. Part one is the dream; part two is the dream within this dream; and part three is the ‘reality’… but only if Richard is a reliable narrator.
There are references to Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Golding’s Lord of the Flies. But it’s Stephen King who Nesbo channels in this superbly plotted – and grizzly – novel The Night House.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORJo Nesbø is a bestselling Norwegian author and musician. He was born in Oslo and grew up in Molde. Nesbø graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics with a degree in economics.
Nesbø is primarily famous for his crime novels about Detective Harry Hole, but he is also the main vocals and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre. In 2007 Nesbø also released his first children’s book, Doktor Proktors Prompepulver.
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