Yummy villain: Levi Thou from The Son (Jo Nesbo)
Oh, is he a pleasure! In the novel The Son, Levi's a crime overlord, a brutish, power-through-fear kind of fellow. He’s dominating and well composed and self-preserving, all the good stuff, as well as physically huge and unnaturally strong. Which is unfortunate, really, because now he’s just this ungodly man who was, apparently, born for power, and who can argue that? Sadly, he only has a handful of appearances that occur mostly towards the end, but he's an important figure throughout the course of the book.
Lookie:
"The man seemed to fill up the entire room. Simon didn’t know if this was simply due to his physical size and obvious presence or the trappings of power and wealth, of this man’s ability to control so many destinies. Or whether all the legends that surrounded his persona made him even bigger, the baggage of death, meaningless cruelty and destruction." (The Son, Jo Nesbo)
"Levi" also happens to be an anagram for 'evil'. Whether that was intentional, I do not know.
The lowdown:
After Sonny's father (a police officer) committed suicide and revealed in a letter that he was a corrupt officer, Sonny becomes a junkie and a professional scapegoat. That is, he takes the fall for persons guilty of crimes and serves time in jail so they don't have to. (This is but one of many Christian-inspired themes in the book.) After being in jail for 12 years, he gets a visitor who confesses that his father was actually murdered. This triggers the onslaught that follows. Sonny escapes prison and seeks to punish those responsible for his father's death in a game of cat-and-mouse between Sonny, the police force, and the gangsters who have, up until now, been keeping him in jail.
The book is dark and smart, both sentimental and morbidly satisfying. Jo Nesbo really knows how to write violence, and he’s written some very creative bits here. There’s an intelligent and very well portrayed female police character that I was impressed with, and this deepens my respect for Jo Nesbo.
Character featured on the “more villains" page of my blog.
