Headhunters

Roger Brown is one of the most successful corporate headhunters in Norway, and he needs to be. His lavish lifestyle and his wife's new art gallery cost far more than any single salary can cover, so he has quietly taken up a second line of work: stealing valuable paintings from the people he interviews.

At a gallery opening, Roger is introduced to Clas Greve, a man who looks like an ideal candidate for the top job at a major company. Greve also lets slip that he owns a Rubens that has been missing since the Second World War. For a man with Roger's hobby, it sounds like the answer to every money problem he has.

But when Roger breaks into Greve's apartment, the painting is not the only thing he finds. What follows is a darkly comic chase in which a confident thief discovers that he has picked the wrong target, and that Clas Greve may be the worst thing ever to walk into his life.

Jo Nesbo, best known for his Harry Hole crime novels, here writes a fast, twisty standalone that mixes black humor with real menace, in the spirit of the Coen brothers.