Odd Numbers

Starred review from April 3, 2017
Early in Edgar-finalist Holt’s outstanding ninth Hanne Wilhelmsen novel (after 2016’s Beyond the Truth), Billy T., Hanne’s old friend and police partner, visits Hanne, who was shot in the spine in the line of duty and is now gingerly returning to police work, at her Oslo apartment. As Billy T. is telling Hanne about his troubled and alienated son, Linus, they hear a nearby explosion. A bomb has shattered the office of the National Council for Islam in Norway, a moderate Islamic group, killing 23 people. In the wake of this tragedy, there is an outbreak of flaming anti-Islamic rhetoric from Norway’s right-wing Progress Party and hate-filled radical Islamic videos claiming responsibility for the bombing. Billy T. laboriously traces Linus’s apparent flirtation with radical Islam, while Hanne and an oddball detective, Henrik Holme, probe a cold homicide case with ties to young Pakistani immigrants. On the personal side, Hanne faces potential conflict with her partner, Nefis, a Turkish Muslim who’s now nominally an atheist but whose faith is still intact “deep inside.” Holt sheds a vital humane light on one of today’s most lethal social problems.

April 15, 2017
Eleven years after she's sidelined from the Oslo police department by a bullet to the back, retired DI Hanne Wilhelmsen rejoins her old friend Billy T. to root out a particularly virulent cell of terrorists.Considering how long she's been in a wheelchair, Hanne (1222, 2012, etc.), who still consults with the police, is suddenly suspiciously popular. Officer Henrik Holme seeks her help in a cold case: the 1996 disappearance of teenager Karina Knoph. Closer to home, Billy T. wants to know why his son Linus has been acting so strangely remote lately. Ever since the bombing of the offices of the National Council of Islam in Norway killed 23 people, Billy T.'s been worried that Linus might have gotten in with the wrong crowd. But although Linus makes no secret of his hatred and contempt for the father who sired him along with five siblings scattered among five different mothers, he assures him so passionately that he'd never have anything to do with Islamists that Billy T. has to believe him. As talking heads on Norwegian TV solemnly weigh in on the problems of immigration and nativism, police discover the corpse of Abdullah Hassan, the best friend of missing suspected bomber Mohammad Awad, poisoned and dismembered, and learn that over 100 pounds of C4 has gone missing from the army's stockpile. Billy T. works himself into a frenzy over his son; Deputy Chief of Police Hakon Sand goes toe-to-toe with his brazenly unapologetic childhood friend Lt. Col. Gustav Gulliksen over the missing explosives; but it's young Henrik Holme who'll carry off the honors for detective work. Pray that his labors, and everyone else's, are enough to do the job. A prophetic counterterrorist procedural whose bold central conceit is likely to grow more depressingly plausible with every passing week.

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April 15, 2017
This is the ninth and penultimate installment of the Hanne Wilhelmsen series. Many fans may have feared that Hanne was dead at the end of Beyond the Truth (2016), but she did survive the shooting and is confined to a wheelchair. Note that the series was not translated in chronological order, so those who had read 1222 (2011) were already aware of this fact. Eleven years have gone by, and the indomitable Hanne has no sooner agreed to serve as a special adviser on cold cases for the police when there is a major attack on the Islamic Cooperation Council's headquarters in Oslo. The mystery unfolds within a realistic portrayal of Europe's burgeoning immigrant population and the violent extremismon both sidesthis phenomenon has engendered. One key recurring character is sacrificed in this book, but a fascinating new character in the person of Hanne's new assistant, Henrik Holme, is added. Readers will want to read more about him. Jo Nesb calls Anne Holt the godmother of Norwegian crime fiction. She has been writing three series concurrently since 1993.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)