Jo Nesbø, the Norwegian author best known for his 13-book crime series starring Harry Hole (“The Snowman” was made into a 2017 movie with Michael Fassbender), is out with something completely different.
“The Night House” begins like something from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft, as a young, bullying boy in the English countryside dares a classmate to make a prank call from a phone booth. By page eight, the classmate’s ear is “stuck to the bloody, perforated listening end,” and the phone is making slurping sounds as it liquifies Tom and sucks him into oblivion. Suddenly Richard, the young bully, is a chief suspect in Tom’s disappearance.
