The Leopard
Authors: Jo Nesbo
About the Book
In the depths of winter, a killer stalks the city streets. His victims are two young women, both found with twenty-four inexplicable puncture wounds, both drowned in their own blood. The crime scenes offer no clues, the media is reaching fever pitch, and the police are running out of options. There is only one man who can help them, and he doesn’t want to be found.
Deeply traumatised by the Snowman investigation, which threatened the lives of those he holds most dear, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong’s opium dens. But with his father seriously ill in hospital, Harry reluctantly agrees to return to Oslo. He has no intention of working on the case, but his instinct takes over when a third victim is found brutally murdered in a city park.
The victims appear completely unconnected to one another, but it’s not long before Harry makes a discovery: the women all spent the night in an isolated mountain hostel. And someone is picking off the guests one by one.
A heart-stopping thriller from the bestselling author of
The Snowman
,
The Leopard
is an international phenomenon that will grip you until the final page.
Praise for Jo Nesbo
‘Many authors know how to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Jo Nesbø’s one of the few who keeps them there’ Linwood Barclay
‘This is chilling, spectacular stuff, and anyone looking for serious, and seriously compelling, crime writing need look no further’ Mark Billingham
‘Jo Nesbø is my new favourite thriller writer and Harry Hole my new hero’ Michael Connelly
‘Nesbø is in a class of his own’
Evening Standard
‘A master at work’ Time Out
Praise for
The Snowman
‘Every now and then, a truly exceptional crime novel comes along, something so gripping that it recalls classics such as
The Silence of the Lambs
. One of Norway’s most successful crime writers, Jo Nesbø has pulled it off with
The Snowman
… This superb novel… deserves comparison with the first volume of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy’
Sunday Times
‘Nesbø, in his fifth, most wide-ranging novel, gradually tightens the narrative grip until, throughout the last 100 pages, the reader also finds it hard to breathe’
Evening Standard
‘This is crime writing of the highest order, in which the characters are as strong as the story, where an atmosphere of evil permeates, and the tension never lets up’
The Times
, Marcel Berlins
Jo Nesbo
The Leopard
TRANSLATED
FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY
Don Bartlett
Contents
1 The Drowning
2 The Illuminating Darkness
3 Hong Kong
4 Sex Pistols
5 The Park
6 Homecoming
7 Gallows
8 Snøw Patrol
9 The Dive
10 Reminders
11 Print
12 Crime Scene
13 Office
14 Recruitment
15 Strobe Lights
16 Speed King
17 Fibres
18 The Patient
19 The White Bride
20 Øystein
21 Snow White
22 Search Engine
23 Passenger
24 Stavanger
25 Territory
26 The Needle
27 Kind, Light-Fingered and Tight-Fisted
28 Drammen
29 Kluit
30 Guest Book
31 Kigali
32 Police
33 Leipzig
34 Medium
35 The Dive
36 Helicopter
37 Profile
38 Permanent Scarring
39 Relational Search
40 The Offer
41 The Blue Chit
42 Beavis
43 House Call
44 The Anchor
45 Questioning
46 Red Beetle
47 Fear of the Dark
48 Hypothesis
49 Bombay Garden
50 Corruption
51 Letter
52 Visit
53 Heel Hook
54 Tulip
55 Turquoise
56 Decoy
57 Thunder
58 Snow
59 The Burial
60 Pixies and Dwarfs
61 The Drop
62 Transit
63 The Storehouse
64 State of Health
65 Kadok
66 After the Fire
67 Prince Charming
68 Pike
69 Looped Writing
70 Blind Spot
71 Bliss
72 Boy
73 Arrest
74 Bristol Cream
75 Perspiration
76 Redefinition
77 Fingerprint
78 The Deal
79 Missed Calls
80 The Rhythm
81 The Cones of Light
82 Red
83 The End of the World
84 Reunion
85 Edvard Munch
86 Calibre
87 Kalashnikov
88 The Church
89 The Wedding
90 Marlon Brando
91 Parting
92 Free Fall
93 The Answer
94 Glass Noodles
95 The Allies
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781407086071
Published by Harvill Secker 2010
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Jo Nesbo 2009
English translation copyright © Don Bartlett 2011
Jo Nesbo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published with the title
Panserhjerte
in 2009
by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
H
ARVILL
S
ECKER
Random House
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN
9781846554001 (hardback)
ISBN
9781846554018 (trade paperback)
This translation has been published with the financial support of
NORLA
ALSO BY JO NESBO
The Redbreast
Nemesis
The Devil’s Star
The Redeemer
The Snowman
