Al fin y al cabo, la muerte no deja de ser lo más serio. Ese enemigo que siempre halla nuestro rastro y del que nos pasamos la vida hyyendo, pero que tarde o temprano nos encontrará, es solo cuestión de tiempo" I read that when Henrik Bakke found her he thought at first she was asleep. Pity he wasn’t there when she died. He might have learned something. I mean, it must be fascinating to study a human being in transit between life and death, don’t you think?’

My absolute favorites were London, The Jealousy Man and The Line, which incidentally were all in Part One. Part Two had a more dystopian feel to the stories and that isn’t really my thing, though I did like Cicadas of all the stories in this section. Los primeros relatos ( Londres, El hombre celoso y La cola) se sintieron como algo conocido, tenían un giro predecible que no les quitó que fueran entretenidos. Toda la construcción de El hombre celoso estuvo bien hecha, pero como dije, era predecible y eso le quitaba un poco de potencia al final. Basura resultó interesante, aunque principalmente por el tono y la voz narrativa, la forma en que el mismo protagonista no sabía bien lo que sucedió y el cómo todo se fue develando, admito que esperé un poco más del final, pero estuvo bien. You found those little bottles of cyanide solution in the cellar, didn’t you, officer?’ The chocolate melts on my tongue, and I can feel the hard centre against my soft palate. ‘One was missing. I took that with me when I was thrown out. Not really sure why. I was pretty far down, maybe I had some idea of doing away with myself. You make hydrocyanic acid from cyanide, but you probably know that?’

A veritable crime lover’s delight from a true master of mystery and suspense. Experience the #1 New York Times best-selling author as never before in this dark and thrilling short story collection that takes us on a journey of twisted minds and vengeful hearts. Euan Morton read The Earring and The Antidote, which was a twisty tale with tails and set partly in Botswana!

Prve dvije priče ovdje ostavile su na mene možda nešto slabiji dojam, ali zato je ostatak zbirke u potpunosti taj dojam popravio. Ne mogu odrediti koja mi je od ostalih priča sadržanih u ovoj zbirci bila baš najbolja (možda Odd?), jer me se svaka dojmila na malo drugačiji način. No u svima sam njima pronašla ono što i inače tražim u kratkim pričama: jezgrovitost, efektnost i snagu emocija koje su u njima prikazane. Također, sve su me iznenadile načinom na koji se radnja u njima odvila. This was my first Jo Nesbø book and I enjoyed most of his stories and his dark humour and plot twists. His Harry Hole novel's are meant to be excellent so I look forward to diving into them one day. Me gustó que dentro de todo dio la sensación que los relatos eran crueles (siempre habían asesinatos de por medio), pero tenían un tono de esperanza y de bondad mezclada con toda la crueldad detrás. Además, a pesar de lo frustrante que podían llegar a ser por ciertas injusticias la mayoría tuvo un final que dejaba una sensación de satisfacción por el desenlace que tomaba la historia. Jo Nesbø is one of the most talented writers working today. His mostly Norwegian-based mysteries and thrillers are top-notch. He has proven his ability to succeed with the terrific Harry Hole series, as well as stand-alone novels like THE KINGDOM and HEADHUNTERS, which are modern-day classics. So I was more than a little intrigued to read his first collection of short stories, THE JEALOUSY MAN. The stories were read by a variety of narrators, several of whom I was already familiar with. All performances were excellent.

From the Jealousy Man: "That it was true what they said, a confession is a story that's just waiting for an audience." You’re thinking she wasn’t the type to take her own life. And you’re absolutely right. Don’t ask me how, officer, but I know she was murdered.’ Druga priča po redu, već spomenuti Stručnjak za ljubomoru, prava je mini detektivska priča, priča o zločinu iz strasti i nevjerojatno domišljatom načinu da se on prikrije. Nije baš tipična whodunnit priča, jer akteri ove priče puno toga skrivaju ispod površine, tj. nitko nije baš onakav kakvim se doima. Zaplet je donekle predvidiv, ali način na koji priča završava ipak iskače iz uobičajenih narativnih okvira. U ovoj priči ima najviše pripovijedanja, najviše detalja, zbog čega je i njena radnja najsporija u odnosu na ostale, ali ne mogu reći da mi nije bila zanimljiva. Mislim da bi se upravo ova priča najviše mogla svidjeti svima onima koji su u ovoj zbirci očekivali nešto nalik na uobičajenog Nesbøa.

The reason you haven’t found anything is simple. I haven’t been here, officer. At least not this past year. And the housekeeper does a thorough job with her vacuum cleaner.’ Jo Nesbø is one of my favourite authors and the quality of his writing is apparent in many of these but not all in my opinion. I definitely prefer his full length novels all of which I highly rate. However, this is very different collection with some unusual plots and so if you enjoy short stories then you may like this. Svidio mi se i način na koji Nesbø ovdje portretira likove, tj. naglasak koji stavlja na likove koji su više možda zlikovci nego heroji i splet okolnosti koji ih je natjerao da to budu. Ljubomora je sama po sebi snažna emocija, korijen mnogih krivih postupaka i skretanja u pogrešnom smjeru. Ovdje je ona ono nešto što sve priče povezuje, ali i ono nešto što ih sve pokreće. On paper the money was hers, but it was her father who pulled the strings. The insistence on a prenup when we got married was, of course, his idea. He probably saw it all, how she’d soon grow out of her longhaired young photographer with his lofty dreams and his ‘artistic ambitions’. Anyway, he turned out to be a really nice person – polite without being servile, intelligent but in a discreet way, and with a humorous appreciation of the comical aspect of our situation. We drank a couple of beers, and when he began after a while to talk about Simone it didn’t take long for me to realise that he was having exactly the same trouble with her as I had had. She was a cat. She came and went as she pleased, she was spoiled and moody, and loyalty was not her most outstanding quality. If I can put it like that. He complained of all the men friends she had and wondered why she couldn’t have female friends like other women. Talked about the nights she’d come home drunk after he’d gone to bed, and all the new and exciting people she’d met who she was so keen to tell him about. In a sort of aside he asked if I’d seen her since we’d split up and I’d moved out, and with a smile I had to tell him no. The smile was because I had realised that he was probably more jealous of me than I was of him. Isn’t that something of a paradox, officer?’Jo Nesbø već nam je pokazao i dokazao kako se izvrsno snalazi i u kriminalističkim serijalima i u samostalnim trilerima, i u re-tellingu Shakespearea, pa čak i u romanima za djecu. A kakav je u formatu kratke priče? Pogađate: jednako dobar!

Edoardo Ballerini (another favorite narrator) read The Shredder. Quote: "Research projects are like films or building projects; they're never finished on time, or within budget."

A veritable crime lover’s delight from a true master of mystery and suspense. Experience the #1 New York Timesbest-selling author as never before in this dark and thrilling short story collection that takes us on a journey of twisted minds and vengeful hearts. OK. So that wasn’t exactly true. I was jealous of Henrik Bakke. At least the first time I met him. Let me explain. One day he called me at my office and asked if we could meet, he had some papers for me from Simone. I knew these must be the divorce papers, and even though it was, of course, unspeakable of her to use her new lover to deliver them I was curious to know who he was and so I agreed to a meeting at a restaurant. I presume he was just as curious about me. And yet I’ve never been jealous of Henrik Bakke. Isn’t that funny? At least not in the sense of hating him or having a grudge against him. I think the way I looked at it was that he was just another guy same as me, he loved Simone more than anything else on earth. I actually thought of him more as someone in the same boat as me than as a rival.’ Simon Vance (one of my all-time favorite narrators) read London, the opening tale that was truly captivating and held my attention, and Odd. Quotes from London: "then you smiled, just a tiny wavelet on a slushy puddle," and René "Girard's [mimetic] theory is that beyond satisfying our basic needs we don't know what it is we want, so we mimic our surroundings, we value what other people value..." She said. As though it was one of her father’s subsidiary companies and not a marriage she was talking about. Naturally, I had been much too proud to even look at her list. Too hurt to take anything at all from the overgrown villa in Vinderen where we had shared both the good and – the way I remembered it – the very few bad days.