Harry Hole has decided to die. Take your life with whiskey. After the loss of his wife and his former best friend, the Norwegian detective has moved to Los Angeles where he has leaned on a bar waiting for the end to come.
While in Oslo a serial killer is on the loose. He kills young women and drains their brains. The Police have a suspect, Markus Røed, a nasty millionaire addicted to cocaine. Røed wants to prove his innocence and hires Hole to discover the real murderer.
The logical thing is that Harry does not accept the assignment, because nothing matters to him anymore, but suddenly life gives him a second chance. That second chance is a woman, Lucille, an aging actress whose star has long since faded and as drunk as Harry himself.
“Lucille becomes a kind of mother to Harry. She is in danger because she owes a lot of money to a Mexican cartel and Hole decides to save her. So he becomes a private detective to pay off the actress's debt with his fees. Lucille becomes Harry's second chance, the reason to stay alive," explains Jo Nesbø, author of Eclipse (Red
Harry returns to Oslo to catch the murderer and from there the reader is the one who is trapped and can no longer drop Eclipse. It turns out that the criminal is a brainiac who commits his murders with the help of the parasites. As it is. Nesbø has delved into "the study of hosts and parasites in the animal world, in mice that are sexually attracted to cats and let themselves be caught without question" to write Eclipse.
“With some friends we discussed what is the most extravagant parasite in nature. This is the Cymothoa exigua, which attaches itself to the tongue of a fish and sucks its blood until the tongue eventually corrodes and falls off, sticks to the tongue stump, sucks more blood, grows, and becomes a new tongue with his own eyes. They also call it the flute fish louse”, the writer relates, before asking himself: “Who is the parasite and who is the host in human relations? That is the theme of the novel, because nature is the best storyteller”.
Stories that are not devoid of violence, because the serial killer has time to kill a few before Harry finds out and he doesn't do it precisely with caresses. "Violence in my books has been criticized a lot, but I wouldn't say that in Eclipse it is more present than in others, there is simply violence when it serves to move the story and never for free," says the writer, who has gone through Barcelona to present the book.
But in Nesbø's novels there is much more than violence. Their plots are also moved by the characters, the intrigue and the originality of the approaches: “We consume many more books, movies and series than our grandparents and that forces writers to design more original stories, to think more. You have to raise the bar, because readers are not smarter than before, but they are exposed to more stories”, concludes the author who has raised the bar a lot on this occasion, although he may drop it soon because, as announced, "We are near the end of Harry Hole." Let the fans not suffer, because there will be at least one new installment.
