Headhunters by Jo Nesbø

The phrase that immediately came to mind after reading Jo Nesbø's Headhunters was comic thriller.  There's lots of thrilling action.  The action is horrifying and yet so absurd that it can only be read as funny. 

The story revolves around Roger Brown a very successful corporate headhunter who moonlights as an art thief.  The people he steals from are often the people who come to him looking for help finding their next CEO job.  At his wife's art gallery he is introduced to Clas Greve, a seemingly perfect candidate for the CEO job of a technology company that happens to need a CEO.  During his interrogation of Greve (Brown uses police style interrogation techniques to interview clients), Greve reveals that he owns a priceless painting.  He also reveals his past in the military where his job duties seem to have involved hunting down criminals (a different kind of headhunter if you will).  Everything about Greve screams danger (at least it did to me), but Brown cannot pass up the opportunity to steal the aforementioned priceless painting that could mean he would be set up financially for life.  While in the process of relieving Greve of his painting, Brown finds more than he bargained for, and so begins Brown's adventure, an adventure that involves an outhouse filled to the brim, mistaken identity, and duplicitous lovers.  There's a love triangle, or maybe its a quadrangle, or maybe it's corporate espionage - it constantly changes.  Nesbø keeps readers on his toes, with one plot twist after another.  I wish I was able to read Headhunters in the author's native language because I have a feeling it would be even funnier.

This was the first book by Nesbø that I've read and I look forward to reading more.