The Jealousy Man: From the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author of the Harry Hole series

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The officer sits with head bowed. As though he’s the one confessing to murder by poison rather than me. But you didn’t, officer. You didn’t manage to connect the poison to the remains of chocolate you found in her stomach because the chocolate had already melted and dissolved. So I began to worry that Henrik Bakke might get away with it.’ We were the perfect Twist couple, Simone and I,’ I say, and halfway expect the officer to raise one eyebrow and give me a puzzled look. ‘I’m not thinking of the dance but the chocolate,’ I explain. The officer evidently doesn’t have a sense of humour. ‘I like liquorice and nougat and I hate banana creams. As it happens she loved the banana creams. You know, the ones with the yellow-and-green wrapping. Oh yes, of course, you’ve already . . . If ever we had guests I had to take them all out before I put the dish out, so she could have them herself the next day.’ The writing is typical Nesbø, which, for those who have read some of his work, will know is steeped in symbolism and a deeper analysis of the emotional being. Hidden meanings and ideas permeate the narrative, such that the reader may play close attention to get all that Nesbø presents in his writing. With stories that vary in length, it is even more important to pay attention, as there are times when a piece is over before it really begins, meaning the reader will miss what is being presented. This collection of short stories by the talented Jo Nesbø is divided into two themes. The first centres on jealousy and part two around power. I enjoy the first group much better than the second as there’s a really good mix of stories and the theme is evident throughout. The first entitled London is outstanding and my favourite story as I love the clever twist at the end which makes me smile, albeit wryly. The second The Jealousy Man which gives the collection it’s title, has a great premise of sibling rivalry and how that manifests itself into jealousy. It is a bit on the long side with some digressions but it is a clever story of parallel lines. I also like The Line which is short and sharp with the perfect revenge for a line jumper. In Trash we have an angry and jealous refuse disposal officer who really cleans up after himself and The Confession has a particularly yummy Twist! The latter really appeals to my rather dark sense of humour!!

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.’ I counted on you arresting Henrik Bakke as soon as you had the results of the autopsy. I presumed it would be an easy matter to work out that the cyanide came from the chocolates that Bakke had indisputably brought into the house. The chocolate spins round four times when I pull on the ends of the wrapper. I remove the silver foil, fold it four times, run a fingernail over the folds and put it on the coffee table. Then I close my eyes and pop the chocolate into my mouth. Holy Communion. The absolution of sins. Ovo je njegova prva zbirka kratkih priča, od kojih su neke doslovno kratke - tek desetak ili dvadesetak stranica, dok su druge nešto duže i opširnije, poput naslovnog Stručnjaka za ljubomoru, koji je najduža priča u zbirci. This collection of short stories by the talented Jo Nesbø is divided into two themes. The first centres on JEALOUSY and part two around POWER. I enjoyed the first group much better than the second as there’s a really good mix of stories and the theme is evident throughout. The first entitled "London" is outstanding and one of my favourite stories as I love the clever twist at the end which makes me smile wryly. The second "The Jealousy Man" which gives the collection it’s title, has a great premise of sibling rivalry and how that manifests itself into jealousy. It is a bit on the long side with some digressions, but it is still a clever story. I didn't much care for "The Line" which is short and sharp which focuses on the nasty revenge for a someone who jumps the queue in a shop. In "Trash" we have an angry and jealous bin lorry driver who really cleans up after himself and "The Confession" has a particularly delicious Twist! The Confession really appeals to my rather dark sense of humour!! "Odd" was about a writer who is fed up with fame or is he? "The Earring" was really fun with a dark twist to it too...That reminds me, I better get my car serviced soon 🤔Short stories are always a hit or miss for me to be honest. So I usually steer away from them. But when Jo Nesbo writes short stories, I have to read it! I absolutely loved Harry Hole series and his standalone novel, The Kingdom, was an excellent read too! And after finishing this book, I can say that Nesbo's short stories is great too! The title story, “The Jealousy Man,” is an above-average novella. Here, Inspector Nikos Balli has flown to a small Greek isle called Kalymnos. There he meets up with a colleague, George Kostopoulos, where they discuss the case that Balli has been assigned --- the disappearance of Julian Schmid. The prime suspect, and probably the last person to see him alive, is his twin brother, Franz. The rage of jealousy is like love. It's a madness that can make people do things they would normally never dream of doing." Not that things were so important for her when she was alive either. I’ve just been explaining all this to the officer. That she told me I could take anything I wanted when she threw me out – the stereo, the TV, books, kitchen equipment, you name it. She was ready for it. She’d decided this was going to be a civilised breakup. We meet a Greek detective who has become an expert on jealousy thanks to some hard-earned lessons from his private life. Far away, in another country, a taxi driver finds his wife's earring in a car belonging to his boss and sets out to discover how it ended up there. High in the skies above, a woman is on board a plane headed to London, about to end her own life in the wake of her husband's affair with her best friend. But who is the man sitting next to her?

The city is a watering hole on the savannah where animals of every kind congregate; apart from the handful of herbivores so large they’ve got no need to worry, most of us are hunters, prey or scavengers. We live in a symbiotic relationship of fear from which none of us can escape…Redemption comes only when you do what you have to do to survive...Survival...is in the final analysis dependent on our ability to learn the qualities of mercy, wisdom and forgiveness.” Simone loved chocolates. Especially Twist. Every Saturday when I did the shopping at Kiwi I used to buy a big bag of them. It was one of our few routines. It was a sort of anchor in a life based on opportunism, whims, the occasional evening meal together and, as a rule, waking up in the same bed. We blamed our jobs, and I believed that everything would be different once we had a child. That would bring us together. A child. I remember how shaken she was the first time I brought it up. The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot. 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.

Jo Nesbø

The officer has slumped deeper into the armchair. Not surprising really; so far I’ve said nothing of interest to the investigation. But he shows no sign of wanting to stop me either. I put down my coffee cup and take a Twist from the dish of chocolates. Coconut. Not my favourite, but perfectly acceptable. This is a book containing 12 short stories. Part 1 is seven shorts about jealousy. Part 2 is five shorts about power. Before my review I've listed the twelve short stories in the book and given them a rating between 1-5. And I also know that murder is bound to look bad for me as the scorned husband. It gives me a motive. I could have come to see her, I knew where she kept the poison, I could have slipped it into her coffee and then left. I imagine that’s why you’ve been to my place, to see if there’s a match between any of my clothes and the fibres you found here in Simone’s house.’ 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.

We loved each other, officer. We more than loved each other. We were the air each other breathed, we kept each other alive, do you understand? No, of course, why should you?’ The good thing about Twist is the wrapping,’ I say. ‘That you can change your mind. You can wrap it up again without anyone’s being able to see it’s been opened. Unlike most other things. Confessions, for example. Once a confession has been so to speak unwrapped then that’s it, it’s too late.’ But once a second body arrives on his slab I’m pretty sure the coroner is going to be able to work it out, don’t you think? That the murder weapon was right there in front of you the whole time?’

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The investigating officer sits in an armchair facing me, and the notebook lies untouched on the table in front of him. Nesbo also takes us to the near future, to a dystopian America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival in the streets below. We are introduced to two best friends on their way to the running of the bulls in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl and, in the epic and vicious finale, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin.

I didn’t argue either. Just stared at her, trying to discover the real reason hidden behind those vapid clichés she’d been spouting: ‘Best for us both’, ‘moving in different directions’ and ‘time to move on’. And so on. Long a fan Jo Nesbø’s writing, I was curious about this collection of short stories and novellas. While I have come to love Harry Hole and how he emerges as an energetic character, as well as Nesbø’s standalone novels, I was not sure about handling a slew of the author’s creations in a single publication. This collection of stories is not only varied from the crime thrillers that many readers have come to love, but also offers a richness in its presentation, such that there is something for everyone. A great effort by Jo Nesbø, which is sure to appeal to many fans of his gritty writing.

In “London,” the standout first story in “Part One – Jealousy,” we have a mental showdown between two characters who are found aboard a plane together. A man and a woman are seated on the flight, not by accident, and I had to grin when one of them refers to the Patricia Highsmith classic, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. One claims to be petrified of flying, while the other confesses to hoping the plane crashes because they want to die. Are we being victimized by an unreliable narrator, or is something entirely different going on? The dialogue is so razor-sharp that you simply will not have time to think too deeply about the characters. You just want to find out if they both make it to London alive. 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.