> Skip to content
Jo Nesbo
Photo Credit: ©Stian Broch



Jo Nesbo is one of the world’s bestselling crime writers, with The Leopard, Phantom, Police, The Son, The Thirst 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 45 million copies around the world.

Before becoming a crime writer, Nesbo played football for Norway’s premier league team Molde, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di Derre (‘Them There’). They topped the charts in Norway, but Nesbo continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. 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.

Sign up to the Jo Nesbo newsletter for all the latest news: jonesbo.com/newsletter

More features

Article
What we're reading this long weeked!

Are you after a book for this long weekend? Why not try one of these books that our Penguin Random House NZ team loved!

Article
Great Winter Reads

Books that are perfect for curling up with this winter!

Article
What you should read next based on your fave Netflix shows

Done binging the latest TV sensation? Pick up a book and keep the good times rolling. 

Video
A message from Jo Nesbo

A page-turning collection of dark and twisted crime stories from the international bestselling author of the Harry Hole series. Filled with dark thrills, twisted minds and vengeful hearts, these twelve page-turning short stories from 'the king of Scandicrime' (FT) and creator of the iconic detective Harry Hole,will have you reading late into the night. We meet a Greek detective who has become an expert on jealousy thanks to some hard-earned lessons from his private life. Far away, in another country, a taxi driver finds his wife's earring in a car belonging to his boss and sets out to discover how it ended up there. High in the skies above, a woman is on board a plane headed to London, about to end her own life in the wake of her husband's affair with her best friend. But who is the man sitting next to her? Nesbo also takes us to the near future, to a dystopian America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival in the streets below. We are introduced to two best friends on their way to the running of the bulls in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl and, in the epic and vicious finale, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin. In his first ever collection of short stories, this master of crime writing skilfully draws in the reader as we watch the potentially fatal outcomes of humanity's most powerful emotions play out on the page.

Article
Jo Nesbø on writing

The much-loved crime writer talks Harry, vampires and flying jumbo jets.