Nemesis

Jo Nesbø's Nemesis, set in contemporary Oslo, follows Norwegian police detective Harry Hole as he becomes entangled in two interconnected cases: a series of brutal bank robberies and the suspicious death of a former lover.

The novel opens with an unnamed narrator staring down the barrel of a gun, reflecting that the plan "made sense" (1). The scene shifts to Harry watching surveillance footage of a bank robbery at a Nordea branch in Bogstadveien. A masked gunman carrying an AG3 automatic rifle takes cashier Stine Grette hostage and gives branch manager Helge Klementsen twenty-five seconds to empty the ATM. Though Klementsen finishes only six seconds late, the robber shoots Stine through the head before fleeing. Harry is watching the video at home when Anna Bethsen, an old flame, calls to reconnect.

At Police HQ, Police Section Chief (PAS) Rune Ivarsson leads the robbery investigation but clashes with Harry over methodology. Forensic investigator Weber reports no usable evidence from the scene. Harry meets Beate Lønn, a new officer in the Robberies Unit whose father was killed during a bank robbery years earlier. Beate possesses an extraordinary ability to recognize faces due to an abnormally developed fusiform gyrus, a brain region involved in facial recognition. She determines the robber is a meticulous professional who spoke English to disguise his voice and taped his clothing to prevent DNA transfer. Harry's boss, PAS Bjarne Møller, allows Harry and Beate to work as a parallel investigative team.

Harry visits Stine's husband, Trond Grette, and finds him in a psychotic state, hitting tennis balls alone in the rain. That evening, he meets Anna and visits her flat, where three oil portraits hang beneath a lamp shaped like Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution. Anna calls the unfinished installation her "final masterpiece." Harry consults psychologist Ståle Aune, who introduces the concept of "pre-programming," a form of self-hypnosis that could explain the robber's willingness to kill over a six-second delay.

Harry wakes one morning after visiting Anna with no memory of the previous night and evidence he consumed japone chilli at her flat. He cannot reach Anna by phone. Shortly after, Anna is found dead in her flat with a gunshot wound to the temple and a Beretta pistol in her right hand. Inspector Tom Waaler, whom Harry suspects of involvement in the unsolved murder of his former partner Ellen Gjelten, quickly closes the case as suicide. Harry later realizes the gun was in Anna's right hand even though her painting setup confirms she was left-handed, but he keeps this observation to himself.

A second bank robbery follows the same pattern used by the robber police have dubbed "the Expeditor," but no one is killed. Beate discovers on surveillance footage that the robber placed a Coca-Cola bottle in a waste skip before the first robbery, and she and Harry recover it for fingerprint analysis. A lip-reading specialist determines that Stine whispered "It's my fault" to the robber seconds before being shot, suggesting a personal connection between victim and killer.

Harry investigates Anna's death privately. He discovers her flat was registered to her uncle, Raskol Baxhet, a legendary Romani crime lord imprisoned in Botsen prison. A photograph found inside Anna's shoe leads Harry, with the help of his colleague Officer Halvorsen, to Arne Albu, a wealthy investor whose wife Vigdis appears in the photo. Anonymous e-mails arrive from an address signed "S²MN," taunting Harry with knowledge only someone present at Anna's death could possess.

Harry proposes a trade with Raskol: If Raskol identifies the Expeditor, Harry will pursue Anna's killer. Raskol names the robber as Lev Grette, Trond's older brother and a legendary bank robber who disappeared from Norway years earlier. Harry and Halvorsen illegally search Albu's chalet and find evidence that Albu scrubbed the property clean and glued the shoe photograph back into a family album, proving he knew the original was missing. Harry reveals Albu's affair with Anna to Vigdis, who leaves her husband.

Harry enlists Øystein, his childhood friend and a taxi driver, to trace the e-mail server to Egypt's Sinai peninsula. Raskol funds the operation. In Brazil, Harry and Beate find Lev dead by apparent suicide, with a confessional letter addressed to Trond. Fingerprint analysis confirms Lev's prints match those on the Coca-Cola bottle. The Expeditor case appears solved.

Events accelerate. Arne Albu is found murdered, buried alive upside down at his Larkollen property. A final e-mail from S²MN confesses to killing Anna. Waaler obtains an arrest warrant for Harry based on a laptop and his stolen mobile phone found in his cellar, pre-programmed to send the S²MN e-mails. Harry flees and hides with Raskol's associates while Waaler leads a manhunt.

Harry identifies Alf Gunnerud, a locksmith's employee with a criminal record, as the likely killer. Gunnerud works at the locksmith that handles system keys for both Anna's and Harry's buildings, giving him the means to access both flats. Harry finds incriminating evidence in Gunnerud's flat, including a key to his own apartment and a quantity of heroin. Gunnerud flees, and Waaler tracks him down and shoots him dead. Harry is cleared of suspicion.

Yet the case unravels further. Another Expeditor robbery proves Lev was not the sole robber. Analysis of glasses from Anna's kitchen confirms morphine in the Coca-Cola Harry drank, explaining his blackout. Harry realizes Anna drugged him, stole his phone, planted the pre-programmed laptop in his cellar, and orchestrated her own death as an elaborate act of revenge against three men: Albu, who abandoned her; Gunnerud, who introduced her to heroin; and Harry, who left her years earlier. The e-mail signature S²MN, read backwards in a mirror, spells NEMESIS. The three portraits in her studio depict her three targets.

Simultaneously, Harry uncovers the truth about the bank robbery. A handwriting expert confirms the suicide note and Lev's school essays share the same handwriting, but Harry discovers Trond wrote Lev's essays as a child, meaning Trond forged the note. Travel records lead Harry to theorize that Stine was planning to leave Trond for Lev and move to Brazil. Upon discovering the affair, Trond hired a contract killer to murder Lev, then robbed the bank himself disguised as his brother, planting Lev's fingerprints via the Coca-Cola bottle while using glue on his own fingertips.

Harry and Beate confront Trond at a tennis court, where he pulls a concealed AG3 and takes Beate hostage, ordering a twenty-five-second countdown. Harry shoots himself in the forearm, exploiting Trond's lifelong inability to tolerate blood. When a thunderclap distracts Trond, Beate strikes him unconscious. Trond is arrested and confesses to murdering Stine and arranging Lev's death.

The novel closes at Christmas. Rakel, Harry's romantic partner, and her son Oleg return safely from Moscow after winning a custody case. The Special Unit for Police Affairs (SEFO), the police internal-investigations body, clears Waaler of wrongdoing in Gunnerud's death. Beate learns that Raskol killed her father during a bank robbery years earlier but chooses to forgive him, and she begins a relationship with Halvorsen. Harry arranges a reunion between Raskol and his long-estranged brother Stefan. On Christmas Day, Harry sits alone at Police HQ, showing a photograph of Waaler to Roy Kvinsvik, a former associate of murder suspect Sverre Olsen, who claims to have seen Olsen with an unidentified man the night Gjelten was killed, setting up Harry's continued pursuit of Waaler.