The Redbreast

Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast weaves together two timelines: a present-day assassination conspiracy in Oslo from 1999 to 2000, and a World War II narrative set on the Eastern Front and in Vienna. The connections between these timelines emerge slowly, driving the novel toward a climactic confrontation on Norway's Independence Day.

On November 1, 1999, detective Harry Hole and his colleague Ellen Gjelten are stationed at a toll barrier outside Oslo, guarding a US presidential motorcade. Harry spots a man with a weapon in a toll booth and, receiving no signal that the figure is friendly, fires three shots. The man turns out to be an American Secret Service agent. Bernt Brandhaug, the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, engineers a cover-up: Harry will be promoted and transferred to POT, Norway's Security Service, so the shooting appears heroic. Harry reluctantly accepts.

Meanwhile, an unnamed old man receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and begins a methodical campaign. He poisons a large oak tree in the Palace Gardens to clear a line of fire toward the Royal Palace balcony and approaches Sverre Olsen, a violent neo-Nazi skinhead, to purchase a Märklin rifle, an extraordinarily rare German assassination weapon. Olsen contacts a shadowy figure known as "the Prince" to procure it. After finalizing the deal, the old man encounters a drunk who recognizes him as a wartime comrade and threatens exposure; he lures the man into an alley and cuts his throat.

The wartime storyline begins in 1942 near Leningrad, where Norwegian volunteers fight alongside the Germans. Gudbrand Johansen, a quiet country boy, idolizes the charismatic Daniel Gudeson, a legendary marksman. On New Year's Eve 1942, a Russian sniper kills Daniel. When another soldier, Sindre Fauke, reveals his plan to desert, Gudbrand kills him with a bayonet, switches their identity papers, and disguises Fauke's corpse as Daniel's. In January 1944, a grenade wounds Gudbrand, and he is sent to a military hospital.

At the Rudolf II Hospital in the Vienna Woods, Gudbrand, now known as "Uriah," falls in love with nurse Helena Lang. Dr. Christopher Brockhard, infatuated with Helena, threatens to send Uriah to certain death unless she submits to his advances. Helena and Uriah attempt to flee by train but are forced back when Uriah lacks travel papers. An order from Heinrich Himmler eventually directs Uriah's transfer to Oslo, but the night before his departure, he murders Brockhard, then escapes to Norway using Sindre Fauke's identity papers. Helena, bound by her family's debts to the Brockhards, stays behind.

In his new role at POT, Harry discovers spent Märklin cartridges in the forests of Telemark. He traces the weapon to an arms dealer in Johannesburg named Andreas Hochner, who reveals that the buyer was an elderly Norwegian using the code name "Uriah" who mentioned training at Sennheim, a camp for Norwegian volunteers bound for the Eastern Front. Hochner adds that a middleman called "the Prince," a younger man with a Scandinavian accent, arranged the deal.

Harry consults retired professor Even Juul, an authority on the wartime occupation, and visits former front veteran Sindre Fauke. At Fauke's home, Harry meets Sindre's daughter, Rakel Fauke, to whom he is immediately drawn. Fauke provides names from the Sennheim group and describes Gudbrand as a gentle man transformed by war into a lethal bayonet fighter the soldiers called "the redbreast." Harry discovers that Gudbrand Johansen does not exist in Norway's civil registry and that Hallgrim Dale, another veteran, was murdered the previous November with his throat cut.

At a POT party, Harry reconnects with Rakel, who heads the agency's foreign department. That same evening, Ellen is on duty with Tom Waaler, a fellow police officer. When Waaler steps away, his phone rings; Ellen impulsively answers, pretending to be a machine, and hears Olsen demand his commission "for the shooter for the old guy." She realizes Waaler is "the Prince." Terrified, she tries to reach Harry but cannot. On her way home, she is beaten to death with a baseball bat by Olsen, dispatched by Waaler, who plants a combat cap at the scene to frame Olsen.

Harry is consumed by grief. Weeks later, he and young officer Halvorsen identify Olsen as a suspect through boot-print evidence. Waaler goes alone to Olsen's house and shoots him dead, claiming self-defense. Harry suspects Waaler staged an execution to silence Olsen, but Møller, Harry's boss and head of Crime Squad, shuts down his objections.

The novel reveals that Brandhaug has been coercing Rakel into a sexual relationship by manipulating the custody case for her son, Oleg, whose father's Russian family is pressing claims through diplomatic channels. When Harry is recalled from an assignment in Sweden after the Märklin rifle is used to assassinate Brandhaug, he finds the killing was meticulously planned: The sniper waited over 24 hours in a forest bivouac, leaving almost no traces.

Signe Juul, Even's wife and a former wartime nurse, calls Harry in a panic: Someone claiming to be the dead Daniel Gudeson has been telephoning her. She vanishes from her home, where "GOD IS MY JUDGE" is scrawled on a mirror. Her body is found at Akershus Fortress, a wartime execution site, shot by the Märklin rifle and staged as a traitor's execution.

Harry flies to Vienna, where he learns that Johansen murdered Dr. Brockhard before fleeing to Norway and was never found. A former housekeeper shows Harry a photograph of Helena Lang; the face is hauntingly familiar. Back in Oslo, psychologist Ståle Aune explains Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD): Distinct personalities can coexist in one person, triggered by extreme trauma such as combat. Harry theorizes that Even Juul, obsessed with Daniel Gudeson's legend, developed an alternate personality that committed the murders. Police find Juul hanged with a dog lead, apparently a suicide.

On the morning of Independence Day, May 17, Harry wakes in Rakel's bed and wanders into the wrong bedroom. A framed photograph stops him: The woman is Helena Lang, the same face he saw in Vienna. Helena is Rakel's mother. Sindre Fauke is Gudbrand Johansen.

Harry races to Fauke's emptied flat and finds a manuscript titled "The Great Betrayal." It reveals the full truth: After the war, Gudbrand lived as Sindre Fauke, married Helena, and had Rakel. His terminal diagnosis reawakened the personality of Daniel Gudeson, driving him to kill Dale, who could expose him; Signe Juul, who "betrayed" Daniel by marrying Even; and Brandhaug, who was coercing Rakel as Brockhard had once coerced Helena. Gudbrand staged Juul's death as a suicide to frame him. The ultimate target is the Crown Prince on the Palace balcony, descendant of the King who fled Norway in 1940.

Harry speeds through the Independence Day crowds to the SAS Hotel, where Gudbrand booked the Palace Suite months earlier. On the 21st floor, the old man sits at the window with the Märklin rifle aimed through the leafless oak he poisoned. Harry bursts in at gunpoint. The old man, shifting between identities, demands a password. Harry says "Oleg," the name of Gudbrand's grandson. The word breaks through. The old man lowers the rifle without firing.

Gudbrand dies in the hospital two days later. Rakel and Oleg are at his side but never learn the truth. Møller tells Harry the entire case will be suppressed. Harry secures his old post in Crime Squad and a two-month window to investigate Ellen's murder with Halvorsen, pursuing the trail back to Waaler.