This was the setting for the often brutal and always intriguing mysteries unravelled by his hardman detective, Harry Hole.

They were as dark and deep as their setting in the country’s long sun-free days and looming forests – an atmosphere as chilling as the crimes being committed.

Inside the blood red cover of The Night House was a novel vastly different from any of this author’s previous books that had been read and thoroughly enjoyed.

But The Night House plunges suddently into a totally different world. We were confronted with a story that was nothing like anything this reviewer had read from Nesbo’s many best-selling crime fictions.

It was unsettling. He had caught us off-balance, causing much flicking back and forth to check if this really was a Nesbo book.

The first puzzle right from the start was the setting. Surely this was not Norway – or anything that merited the Scandi tag?

Gradually, identifying clues emerged. This was small town America.

It is seen through the minutely observant eyes of fourteen-year-old Richard. But what Richard sees tends to be vastly different from anything approaching normality.

In the opening chapter he and his friend, Tom, squeeze into a phone box that no one has ever been seen using.

Richard’s idea is to make a prank call on someone chosen at random when they flick open the directory.  

Tom makes the threatening call as ordered by Richard. But when he tries to hang up the receiver nibbles Tom’s ear and draws blood.

Tom is unable to let go of the phone. Instead it begins gobbling him up – at first his hand, then his arm and eventually his entire body.

And if you can accept this as a premise for a read-worthy story, good luck. Read on.

What follows is in much the same other-worldy vein.  Richard and his fertile imagination stumble on through life coping stoically with events that he vividly describes but which no one else believes.

It is fantasy, beyond belief, fantasmagorical even. Or simply beyond this realist’s belief or understanding.

It goes without saying, this being a Nesbo creation, that the writing is faultless and crystalline. 

And the characters faced with understanding Richard’s bewildering behaviour are impeccably drawn. Believable, in fact, even though the situations and people Richard describes in such detail exist in his mind only.

Over the decades, and after some early unavoidable skirmishes with the genre, I soon decided fantasy is not for me and have mostly managed to sidestep it for others to deal with.

I was lured into The Night House by the author’s name and therefore without  undertaking a diligence survey. 

However, depending on your source, fantasy rivals crime fiction for top spot among fiction sales.  And Nesbo’s step into the dark side will be a surefire winner among the hordes of fantasists haunting the bookshops.  

Read and enjoy while I lose myself in the latest Louise Welsh.