The Redeemer (harry Hole, #6)

The sixth installment of Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole series, set primarily in Oslo during December 2003, opens with a prologue at Østgård, a rural farmstead recently acquired by the Salvation Army. In August 1991, a fourteen-year-old girl lies awake during a summer gathering, aware that her changing body has drawn new attention. She is infatuated with the charming Robert Karlsen, whose older brother Jon is earnest and protective. That night, after Robert lures her into a barn and pushes sexual boundaries until Jon intervenes, the girl walks alone to the outhouse. A figure pins her down with a knife to her throat and rapes her.

Twelve years later, an unnamed assassin rides the Paris métro, reflecting on his childhood during the 1991 siege of Vukovar, Croatia, where his father died in a hospital after surgeons amputated his arm. The assassin executes a target through a brass door chain, discards the gun, and departs for Zagreb to prepare for what he considers his final job, in Oslo. Flashbacks reveal his wartime code name, mali spasitelj ("the little redeemer"), earned after he destroyed twelve Serbian tanks as a boy soldier. His captain, Bobo, who wore a distinctive red neckerchief, was later executed by Serbian forces while shielding the boy's identity. The assassin took Bobo's neckerchief and has worn it on every mission since.

Inspector Harry Hole, a brilliant and self-destructive detective in Oslo's Crime Squad, is introduced delivering a death notification to the parents of Per Holmen, a young man with a heroin addiction found dead in a shipping container. Harry proves that Per's father, Birger Holmen, killed his son out of desperate love, to spare his wife further torment. The case disturbs Harry's young partner, Halvorsen. Harry is also adjusting to a new boss, Gunnar Hagen, a former military officer who replaces his longtime protector, Bjarne Møller. While following up on Per's connection to the Salvation Army, Harry meets Martine Eckhoff, daughter of Territorial Commander David Eckhoff, at the Army's Lighthouse café and is drawn to her despite himself.

Meanwhile, Salvation Army Captain Jon Karlsen manages a secret relationship with Thea Nilsen while avoiding persistent calls from Ragnhild Gilstrup, the wife of wealthy heir Mads Gilstrup. On December 16, Jon and Thea celebrate her birthday while Robert fills in for Jon at the Salvation Army's Christmas collection point in Egertorget, Oslo's central pedestrian square. At seven o'clock, the assassin steps through the crowd and shoots the uniformed man by the charity pot in the forehead. Robert is dead, killed where Jon was supposed to be standing.

Harry takes charge of the investigation. Press photographs reveal a man with a neckerchief tied in a "cravat knot," a style associated with Croatian soldiers. Harry contacts Europol and discovers a pattern of unsolved contract killings linked to a Croatian suspect. The assassin, stranded in Oslo after his flight is canceled, checks into a hotel under the false passport of Christo Stankic. He soon discovers he killed the wrong man, tracks Jon to his flat, and fires through the door, but Harry tackles Jon out of the way. Beate Lønn, the head of Forensics, confirms the bullets match and determines that the killer can alter his appearance through extreme facial-muscle control, a rare condition called visage du pantomime. Harry realizes Jon, not Robert, was always the intended target.

Parallel storylines deepen the web of secrets around the Karlsen family. Ragnhild Gilstrup pursued Jon obsessively after her father-in-law, Albert Gilstrup, proposed buying undervalued Salvation Army properties to restore the family fortune. Jon initially rejected the offer and a personal bribe of two million kroner but eventually accepted a larger arrangement of five million kroner. When Ragnhild discovers a contract proving the bribe in Jon's flat, Jon kills her in a fit of rage, extracts her eye with a vacuum cleaner, and forces her body down the garbage chute. Psychologist Ståle Aune identifies the mutilation as evidence of uncontrolled fury inconsistent with a professional killer.

Harry flies to Zagreb to trace the contract. After making inquiries at Hotel International, a building that houses Croatian war refugees, he meets Stankic's mother, a former music teacher, at the Balkan Hotel. She reveals that the job was arranged by a go-between who left instructions and a fee of two hundred thousand dollars in a church confessional. Harry deduces that the go-between traveled under Robert's passport and proposes Stankic's freedom in exchange for calling off the hit, but the mother says she cannot reach her son.

Back in Oslo, Halvorsen listens to a voicemail from Mads Gilstrup detailing the bribery arrangement. Jon, standing nearby, hears the message and realizes he is exposed. He attacks Halvorsen from behind with Robert's jackknife, slashing his neck and chest. Stankic arrives moments later, fires his last bullet at the fleeing Jon, and takes Halvorsen's wallet and phone. The police blame Stankic for the stabbing. Stankic hides in the container terminal and exchanges his jacket with Kristoffer, a young man struggling with addiction. When the police Special Forces unit raids the terminal, a marksman shoots the figure in the jacket. The dead man is Kristoffer, not Stankic, but the mistake goes unrecognized.

Harry discovers that Sofia Miholjec, a fifteen-year-old Croatian refugee, was repeatedly raped by Jon, who threatened to evict her family from their Salvation Army flat if she spoke. Robert was Sofia's protector, the one person who threatened to expose Jon. Harry pieces together the full scheme: Jon traveled to Zagreb under Robert's passport and contracted his own murder, intending for the assassin to kill Robert while Jon had the perfect alibi as the supposed target. With the "client" dead, no one in Zagreb would pursue payment. Jon also killed Ragnhild to hide the bribery and stabbed Halvorsen to silence the voicemail confession. Mads Gilstrup, broken by guilt, dies by suicide.

Halvorsen dies while Harry is at Østgård. Harry then learns that someone collected his service revolver using his requisition order, and forensic tests confirm the body at the terminal is not Stankic. The assassin is alive and armed. At the Salvation Army's Christmas concert, Stankic sits behind Jon's empty VIP seat. Martine, the girl from the prologue, has given Stankic Harry's concert ticket, knowing Jon was her rapist. Jon has fled for Bangkok, carrying five million kroner in cash under Robert's passport. Stankic forces Thea at gunpoint to reveal Jon's destination, and Harry and Martine race to Gardermoen Airport.

In the airport restroom, Stankic corners Jon. Harry arrives, aims Halvorsen's revolver at Stankic, and demands he drop the weapon. Jon confesses that he stabbed Halvorsen to suppress the voicemail and tried to finish him off before Stankic's arrival interrupted him. Harry holsters his gun, tells Stankic there is enough money in Jon's bag for his family to build a house in Vukovar, and walks out. Jon begs for forgiveness from the other side of the door. Harry replies that he is not in the forgiveness business; what he deals in is redemption. The implication is clear: Harry has left Jon to Stankic's judgment.

In the epilogue, Beate reveals she is pregnant with Halvorsen's baby and accuses Harry of deliberately letting Stankic execute Jon. Harry does not deny it, telling her he did it for his own redemption. Weeks later, Harry visits Møller in Bergen, where his former boss confesses to belonging to a secret group within the police that accepted bribes, including an expensive watch he gave Harry so that Harry would eventually uncover the corruption. Harry tells Møller he cannot arrest him. Møller says he will handle the rest and disappears into the fog. Harry calls his name into the mist, feeling someone ought to call it anyway.