Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbo is perhaps most well-known for his internationally bestselling 13-book Harry Hole detective series. But with his latest release he takes readers in a decidedly different direction.
In The Night House, Nesbo delivers a deliciously twisted spin on a classic coming-of-age horror story about an unlikeable 14-year-old named Richard who is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote town of Ballantyne after his parents’ tragic deaths in a house fire.
Angry and lonely, Richard does his best to not fit in — and so when one of his classmates goes missing, he becomes the logical scapegoat. But what actually happened to Tom is far more sinister and horrific than anyone could imagine.
Nesbo’s mind-bending story weaves through a couple of timelines, beginning in the early 80s, harkening back to the era when genre greats like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and John Saul made haunted houses, abandoned buildings, and supernatural elements part of horror pop culture.
Nesbo says the itch to write that kind of horror story has always been there — and with this book, he chose to scratch it.
“When I was a kid, the other kids would point at me when we were trying to scare each other with ghost stories,” he says in an interview with BookTrib. “Later they told me it was because they could hear the fear in my voice when I told my stories. They liked the sound effect.”
That’s not the only childhood memory Nesbo tapped into while writing this book. He admits the idea for the spooky house at the core of this chilling tale emerged from those he’d seen on summer road trips with his family.
“I was always fascinated with houses we passed that seemed abandoned or in other ways scary,” he says. “Some houses have this atmosphere … you can immediately imagine bad things happening there. Searching through abandoned houses gives the same feeling. A broken sofa. A child’s drawing on the wall. Cutlery being left in the drawers. All this is stuff for any kid’s active imagination.”
The “item” that fed Nesbo’s imagination for The Night House — and sets the stage for the story’s multi-layered, horror-infused journey — is an old-style telephone. It’s not a spoiler to say that in the opening scenes, the phone quite literally swallows Tom, the missing classmate.
Nesbo says this too was inspired by his childhood — the idea of a prank call going terribly wrong.
“Richard and Tom simply chose the wrong number to call — the number to The Night House,” he says. “The working title was The Meat-Eating Telephone. I still quite like that title.”
And after devouring the book, that’s likely how you’ll remember it too.
About Jo Nesbo:
Jo Nesbo is one of the world’s bestselling crime writers, with The Leopard, Phantom, Police, The Son, The Thirst, Macbeth and Knife all topping the Sunday Times bestseller charts. He’s an international number one bestseller and his books are published in 50 languages, selling over 55 million copies around the world.
When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel, The Bat.
