Book review: The Son

Niccolo Machiavelli had said very wisely that 

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

Yet, this is not the case in this story. 

Sonny Lofthus' father, a police officer, committed suicide when his son was still young. He left a note in which he admitted to corruption, leaving his son and wife devastated. After his mother died of an overdose, Sonny becomes a heroin addict and agrees to go to prison as a scapegoat for a number of murders getting supplies of the drug in return. 

During the twelve years he spends in prison, Sonny is being treated as a saint by the other inmates, who believe his hands have healing power and they go to him and confess their crimes. One day one of them tells the boy that his father was actually killed, that he was not the mole the police force had been looking for all those years and that the corruption accusation was fake. Sonny decides to stop using drugs, escapes from prison and starts his plan to avenge his father and, at the same time, take revenge on all those who had committed the crimes for which he stayed in prison for over a decade. 

The chapters go back and forth between Sonny and Simon Kefas, the main detective character of the book and the one who causes the final catharsis. Junkies, gangsters, corrupted state employees, ordinary people - all act and interact in the warm Norwegian summer.

The book is an excellent example of the Scandinavian noir, as all Nesbo's books. The characters could have been more developed to engage the readers, but the story still remains captivating, the action is fast and, at last, the 600+ pages do not seem as intimidating as in the beginning. 

The fans of Nordic noir are going to be more than satisfied.

+ excellent translation into English, fast plot, suspense 

- violence, characters lacking of depth, too long

(written by FK for Walkley Library)

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