Jo Nesbø - Headhunters

Nesb has a horrormeisters flair for transforming natural scenes into ominous situations.

The New York Times Book Review

Irresistibly addictive. This is reading as you experienced it in childhood, without any gap between eye and mind, but with the added pleasures that adult plots and adult characters can bring. Brilliantly conceived, carefully worked out, and complicatedly satisfying.

Slate

Nesbs books have a serious, socially significant heft, as well as a confident (even cocky) narrative stride that is unmatched.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Nesbs pace is unerring, and the way he builds up suspense will incite Pavlovian page-turning.

Time Out New York

With Henning Mankell having written his last Wallander novel and Stieg Larsson no longer with us, I have had to make the decision on whom to confer the title of best current Nordic writer of crime fiction. I hesitate no longer. [Nesb] wins. This is crime writing of the highest order.

The Times (London)

A mind-blowing story that captivates the reader from the very first page. [Nesb] has found a delightfully laconic, hard-boiled tone in Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammetts tracks, which triumphs exactly where it should: when circumstances are the worst, the bullets zing by and the corpses pile up. Entertaining, sharp and suspenseful.

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)

This book is one you absolutely have to read. The outrageous storytelling is so stimulating, it makes James Ellroy look like a Boy Scout and Bret Easton Ellis like a Sunday-school boy.

Helsingin Sanomat (Finland)

A highly entertaining, first-rate crime novel, where Nesb uses his entire register of narrative techniques and tricks to tell a story that is wilder and more zany than anything he has ever written before.

Dagbladet (Norway)

Nesb can out-write most of his Scandinavian colleagues. Cleverly written and effectively composed, and you can easily devour it in one ravishing read.

Nordjyske Stiftstidende (Denmark)

Headhunters has everything that makes a good crime novel: Strange murders, inventive disappearing acts and above all brilliant fraud for all youre worth.

Bogrummet (Denmark)

The reader is glued to the pages like gum to the street. With Headhunters, Nesb has accomplished [a] brilliant and elegant thriller.

Dagsavisen (Norway)

Jo Nesb is a musician, songwriter, economist, and author. The first crime novel in his Inspector Harry Hole series was published in Norway in 1997, an instant hit, winning the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel (an accolade shared with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell). He also established the Harry Hole Foundation, a charity to reduce illiteracy among children in the third world. He lives in Oslo.

www.jonesbo.com

The Snowman
The Devils Star
Nemesis
The Redbreast

A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, SEPTEMBER 2011

Translation copyright 2011 by Don Bartlett
Excerpt from The Snowman copyright 2010 by Don Bartlett

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by
agreement with the Salomonsson Agency in Norway as Hodejegerne by
H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo, in 2008. Copyright 2008 by
Jo Nesb. This translation originally published in trade paperback
in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, an imprint of
The Random House Group Limited, London.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and
colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-0-307-94869-4

www.blacklizardcrime.com

Cover design by Peter Mendelsund

v3.1

A COLLISION BETWEEN TWO vehicles is basic physics. It all comes down to chance, but chance phenomena can be explained by the equation Energy Time = Mass difference in Velocity. Add values to the chance variables and you have a story that is simple, true and remorseless. It tells you, for example, what happens when a fully loaded juggernaut weighing 25 tons and travelling at a speed of 80 kph hits a sedan weighing 1,800 kilos and moving at the same speed. Based on chance with respect to point of impact, construction of bodywork and the angle of the two bodies relative to one another, a multitude of variants to this story are possible, but they share two common features: they are tragedies. And it is the sedan which is in trouble.

It is strangely quiet; I can hear the wind rushing through the trees and the river shifting its water. My arm is numb and I am hanging upside down, trapped between flesh and steel. Above me, blood and petrol drip from the floor. Beneath me, on the chessboard ceiling, I can see a pair of nail scissors, a severed arm, two dead men and an open overnight bag. The white queen is broken, I am a killer and no one is breathing inside the car. Not even me. That is why I will die soon. Close my eyes and give up. Giving up is wonderful. I dont want to wait any longer now. Hence the hurry to tell this story, this variant, this story about the angle of the bodies relative to one another.

THE CANDIDATE WAS TERRIFIED .

He was dressed in Gunnar ye attire: grey Ermenegildo Zegna suit, hand-sewn Borelli shirt and burgundy tie with sperm-cell pattern, I guessed Cerrutti 1881. However, I was certain about the shoes: hand-sewn Ferragamo. I once had a pair myself.

The papers in front of me revealed that the candidate came armed with excellent credentials from NHH the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, in Bergen a spell in Stortinget for the Conservative Party and a four-year success story as the managing director of a medium-sized manufacturing company.

Nevertheless, Jeremias Lander was terrified. His upper lip glistened with sweat.

He raised the glass of water my secretary had placed on the low table between us.

Id like I said with a smile. Not the open, unconditional smile that invites a complete stranger to come in from the cold, not the frivolous one. But the courteous, semi-warm smile that, according to the literature, signals the interviewers professionalism, objectivity and analytical approach. Indeed, it is this lack of emotional commitment that causes the candidate to trust his interviewers integrity. And as a result the candidate will in turn according to the aforementioned literature provide more sober, objective information, as he has been made to feel that any pretence would be seen through, any exaggeration exposed and ploys punished. I dont put on this smile because of the literature, though. I dont give a damn about the literature; it is chock-a-block with various degrees of authoritative bullshit, and the only thing I need is Inbau, Reid and Buckleys nine-step interrogation model. No, I put on this smile because I really