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Read by Sean Barrett. — Penguin Audio 2020. — 128 Kbps. — Duration 17:45:00.

You don't have to be a Buddhist to recognize the bad karma accumulating year by year for the Opgard brothers, Roy and Carl, in “The Kingdom,” a dense, suspenseful bundle of Norwegian noir by Jo Nesbo, the author of the esteemed Harry Hole police detective series. Melancholy, alcoholic Harry is nowhere to be found in the remote village of Os (not a typo). Instead, it’s Kurt Olsen, the equally downcast town sheriff, who is certain these two generally well-liked village chaps - their parents died when the boys were in their late teens and Dad’s beloved Cadillac DeVille flew off a cliff - are clever homicidal connivers. The constable is right, of course, for what little good his investigatory brainpower does him against a couple of sociopaths.
The sometimes droll, sometimes eerily affectless, occasionally enraged narrator is Roy, the older brother, a mechanic who runs the Os convenience store and gas station. A few people in town think Roy is “in love with” the younger brother he protects from bullies and other annoying villagers. It soon becomes apparent, though, that the ongoing nonconsensual incest that sets an increasingly ugly chain of events in motion is of a different sort.
Most of Nesbo’s characters are wracked with guilt - for good reason. Roy tells himself that “a minor theft, a trivial rejection - you never get over. They’re like lumps in the body that get encapsulated but can still ache on cold days, and some nights suddenly begin to throb.” Carl, though, is less bothered by conscience. Of selling one’s soul, he says, “It’s always a buyer’s market when it comes to souls.”
Why do mentally healthy readers want to spend time with these godawful people? Writers like Nesbo have that knack for instilling just enough humanity in their miscreants that we keep hoping they might, if not repent, then at least acknowledge their moral scuzziness. Or, being morally imperfect ourselves, we sort of hope they don’t get caught - at least not yet. Think Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Walter White in “Breaking Bad.”