Nemesis means 'to give what is due' in Greek. The ancient Greeks gave the idea of a vengeful fate to a goddess who could dish out spectacularly over-the-top punishments against those the gods felt had disrespected them.

To tell the utter truth, I experience schadenfreude with frank unadulterated delight. Fortunately for my soul, I am not given much opportunity to indulge myself. Also, perhaps fortunately, such scruples as I possess in this area of my psyche become engaged if the punishment seems too much beyond what it is deserved. I know I'm not expressing something unknown to others (I'm looking at you, gentle reader of murder-mysteries!)

For some of you, this novel, the fourth in the Harry Hole series, will have you swearing off revenge (at least, through the holiday season). For others (of which I number), you'll take notes.

Kidding! I'll not take notes, anyway. Somebody like Hole would probably find a knuckle hair of mine on the pages. Anyway, my admiration tends to be intellectual and my wishful thinking only wishful. Like most readers, I'd rather think (and read) than do. It's why my couch has a sizeable dent while my running shoes need dusting. If I feel like calling upon my inner Nemesis, I'll blog like everyone else.

There is no dust on Harry Hole, or on the murderers echoing each other in Nemesis (yes, I AM punning very weakly on the nymph Echo, who, in one story, was torn to pieces and spread all over the earth. I usually overuse the word mirroring). Everyone in the novel has a reason to produce their inner Nemesis, so many that I kept looking for a character with no unhealed motive for vengeance of one sort or another. Oleg, Rakel's son, is the single possessor of a pure heart.

I made the mistake of listening to an audiobook version at first. Do not listen to this story of Nemesis. Either check out the physical book from the library or buy it. This is a particularly convoluted, complex, and tangled plot, where two unrelated murders occur and Harry works on solving them simultaneously for almost 500 pages. Along the way, Hole is also concerned over his girlfriend Rakel's custody fight with her ex-husband, a Russian professor who is connected to powerful people in Russia. If that isn't enough, the author made it a certainty that he'd fry the reader's brains into a crispy desiccated block of cheese in adding in Hole's ongoing personal Nemesis investigation into his ex-partner's murder by an unknown (to him, but not to us fans) arms dealer, although Hole has suspicions. Hole solves each murder at least three times - and I'm still not certain he got it right!

This is an years-old previously published novel, so there are many plot descriptions in print. I'd advise keeping yourself as ignorant as possible of the puzzling maze of false turns, if the Hole series is new to you, to really enjoy this particular book in the series. However, it is this same delight which is deciding me to give this award winner only four stars, IMHO. It struck me like crop circles - the how it was done was so foremost in my mind I could not relax and enjoy the entertainment. Too clever by half, as Nemesis might say.