On leave from his Harry Hole novels, Nesbø delivers stories ranging from dystopian visions to time-honored tales of duplicity and revenge. Few of Nesbø's characters pass the decency test. A man's kindliness toward a sobbing woman seated next to him on a flight to London masks dark intentions. An assassin with a day job in Milan as a psychologist is himself marked for death by a sadistic hit man of greater repute. In San Sebastián, an ardent proponent of the multiverse is suspected of killing one of his "other" selves. An Austrian researcher hiding out in Spanish Sahara devises a formula for immortality to save his ailing wife only to fight off corporate types who will do anything to take possession of it. The estranged son of a billionaire thinks twice about saving his father from a deadly snakebite in Botswana. Nesbø is at his best in the long, wonderfully atmospheric title story, which shows off his gift for pulling one story out of another. Summoned to the Greek island of Kalymnos to investigate the possible murder of a man by the man's twin brother, Athens detective Nikos Balli--who specializes in sniffing out jealousy as a motive--ends up detecting an old friend's ill intentions during a mountain-climbing outing. Nesbø is less successful with "Rat Island," a baggy pandemic tale in which marauding bikers tear down the last vestiges of civilization while rich people plan their futures from the safety of a skyscraper. This story and others seem hastily drawn, and the author has a tendency to be too clever for his own good--the twistiest twists can arrive with a soft thud. But he never runs out of ideas or characters driven by inner thoughts. Humanity is at low ebb in this enjoyable, if uneven, collection--Nesbø's first. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The 12 tales in this impressive collection from bestseller Nesbø (the Harry Hole series) blend taut suspense with sharply limned characters. "Rat Island" is the highlight, a dystopian tale set in the U.S. after a devastating pandemic. The health crisis proves an opportunity for the rich, helping them "in their struggle against those who posed the greatest threat to them: hordes of the poor and the desperate." This disturbingly plausible near-future is enhanced by detailed worldbuilding; for example, visually impaired characters prepared in advance for doomsday by getting laser surgery, expecting that glasses and contact lenses would be hard to obtain. Nesbø also makes the most out of the conceit of the title story--a detective specializes in homicide cases where jealousy is the motive. Grim humor ("rather than kill someone they hate, Greeks allow the victim to go on living in Greece," thus, the low murder rate in Greece) leavens stories highlighting the dark side of human nature. Frederick Forsyth fans will be enthralled. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden). (Oct.)

A No. 1 New York Times best-selling author with an unparalleled capacity for freezing our blood, Nesbø offers a packed story collection. A man may have murdered his twin in a fit of jealousy, a woman decides to stare down deep-seated personal issues after an encounter with a male voyeur, a grieving father considers the role of vengeance in a post-pandemic world, and two passengers on a flight to London instantly bond--but bonds can strangle. Be prepared; Hollywood has already grabbed three of these stories.

In his first short-story collection, Nesbø, author of the bestselling Harry Hole series, showcases the key ingredients that distinguish his novels: devilishly constructed plots in which the flashes of human feeling exhibited by deeply flawed characters are in continual danger of being snuffed out by the darkness within. So it is in these 12 stories, which track the soul-killing effects of either jealousy (the first seven stories) or power (the final five). Some, including the exceptional title story, about a Greek cop with a preternatural knack for detecting jealousy as a motive for murder, run to nearly novella length but never feel like undernourished novels in search of another 200 pages. Whether a story hinges on a shocking twist (the Hitchcockian chiller "London"), on a character's gradual recognition of where his demons have led him ("Trash"), or on the world-building necessary to construct a post-pandemic dystopia in which our most repressed hungers run rampant ("Rat Island"), Nesbø unveils his deeply unsettling revelations at the perfect tempo. These aren't easy stories to read one after another, so readers may want to think about their own tempo.