Roy Opgard may look like your average gas station attendant in the small Norwegian town of Os, but he’s a whole lot more than that. Much more. He’s a protector of the family, a business whiz, and, above all, a true fixer—the kind of guy who solves problems. And Os? It’s got no shortage of those. The Opgard brothers’ past (and present) is soaked in violence (see: The Kingdom). But for anyone who wants to become the king of a town like this, that’s hardly news. Except maybe the part where blood ties start to matter less and less… What follows is, naturally, a classic Jo Nesbø thriller — clever, twisty, and in this case, laced with an unusually heavy dose of melancholy.
It Was the Man at the Pump
Yep, the guy at the gas station. He did it all. Every single murder in Os… For the record, Roy Opgard is not a brutal, bloodthirsty monster. The fact that an alarming number of Os’s dearly departed met their end at his hands isn’t entirely his fault.
It took an abusive, tormenting father who targeted his own son. And a mother who looked the other way. Everything else followed from that. Oh, and of course, there was the charming, likable, but weak-willed brother, Carl, too.
The prequel to Blood Ties — The Kingdom — may be a thriller, and a solid one at that, but at its core, it’s also the life story of a lonely man longing for love. Its heavy, melancholic tone stands in sharp contrast to the looming sense of fate and the constant return of violence.
