Book Review: The Thirst

Jo Nesbo's new crime thriller is so gory and nightmarishly frightening it may put you off Tinder. (Assuming you are using it of course!) For here is a tech-savvy serial killer who uses the online dating app as a hunting ground to scour for potential victims, stalking them and locating their whereabouts, before killing them for good by drinking their blood. Yes, blood! If you thought The Snowman (are you ready for the movie?) and The Leopard were bloody enough, this new killer and his thirst for blood is here to prove you wrong.

However when The Thirst opens, Harry Hole, despite being haunted by an elusive killer in his dreams, appears sated, no longer thirsty for recognition and in single-minded pursuit of sadistic murderers at the cost of risking his life, his family and everything. But as the vampirism-inspired murders keep piling up, the maverick inveterate alcoholic is forced to leave his current job as a police academy lecturer to track down the vicious killer. Eleventh in the acclaimed series, The Thirst packages all you would want from a complex mystery, the violent, visceral nordic noir at times stretching its limits of credulity by packing in twists within twists even as Nesbo does a Jeffery Deaver with his psychological portrayal of the killer. A ride worth taking, even if a trifle disappointing.