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Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2020
560 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Roy and Carl have spent their whole lives running from the darkness in their past, but when Carl finally returns to make peace with it, the two brothers are inexorably drawn into a reckoning with their own demons.
Roy has never left the quiet mountain town he grew up in, unlike his little brother Carl who couldn't wait to get out and escape his troubled past. Just like everyone else in town, Roy believed Carl was gone for good. But Carl has big plans for his hometown. And when he returns with a mysterious new wife and a business opportunity that seems too good to be true, simmering tensions begin to surface and unexplained deaths in the town's past come under new scrutiny. Soon powerful players set their sights on taking the brothers down by exposing their role in the town's sordid history.
But Roy and Carl are survivors, and no strangers to violence. Roy has always protected his younger brother. As the body count rises, though, Roy's loyalty to family is tested. And then Roy finds himself inextricably drawn to Carl's wife, Shannon, an attraction that will have devastating consequences. Roy's world is coming apart and soon there will be no turning back. He'll be forced to choose between his own flesh and blood and a future he had never dared to believe possible.
"Nesbø peels away the secrets surrounding Carl's project, his backstory, and his connections to his old neighbors so methodically that most readers, like frogs in a gradually warming pan of water, will take quite a while to realize just how extensive, wholesale, and disturbing those secrets really are. The illusions of a family and its close-knit town constructed and demolished on a truly epic scale." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Echoes of such classic noir authors as Dorothy B. Hughes, James M. Cain, and Jim Thompson…Nesbø brilliantly uses the insularity of Roy's world, both internally and externally, to accentuate the Shakespearean inevitability of the impending tragedy." - Booklist (starred review)
"[T]wisty...Fans of classic noir such as Double Indemnity will be hooked." - Publishers Weekly
"Nesbø 's slow-burn thriller is guaranteed to be in high demand. As the story unfolds, it builds in dread and depravity. The small-town atmosphere resembles a Peyton Place as envisioned in an unlikely collaboration between Raymond Chandler and Henrik Ibsen. The complex characters and twisting plot will keep readers turning the pages and eager to discuss." - Library Journal
"For mystery readers in search of heroes a shade darker than Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, enter...Jo Nesbø...The Kingdom, Nesbø's new standalone story, sees him peeling back layers of unnerving secrets surrounding a pair of brothers in Oslo, from their parents' mysterious deaths to their family's disturbing history and the secrets of their hometown." - TIME, "The 42 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2020"
This information about The Kingdom was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jo Nesbo is one of the world's bestselling crime writers, with The Leopard, Phantom, Police, The Son and his latest Harry Hole novel, The Thirst, all topping the Sunday Times bestseller charts. He's an international number one bestseller and his books are published in 50 languages, selling over 33 million copies around the world.
Before becoming a crime writer, Nesbo played football for Norway's premier league team Molde, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di derre ('Them There'). They topped the charts in Norway, but Nesbo continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. ...
... Full Biography
Link to Jo Nesbo's Website
Name Pronunciation
Jo Nesbo: According to the author's website, Jo is pronounced like 'you', and Jo says the 'o' in Nesbo is similar to the vowel in Inspector Clouseau's pronunciation of the word 'bomb'
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