Review: Tom Egeland “666” – God damn boring

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Pure Doomsday that is. Armageddon. The apocalypse. And that is precisely what Tom Egeland plays with in his latest Bjørn Beltø crime. The title is taken from John’s Revelation, the last and most terrifying Scripture in the New Testament: “Falling stars. Sea of ​​blood. The world in flames. Doomsday. The number of the beast – 666. Timpani and trumpets. At least trombones. Seals and angels and scrolls and abysses. Bursting with symbolism and mystery and bloody allegories.”

Pure nonsense for some, bloody seriousness for others. But what if Johannes actually described a real event, asks Egeland in this book. Actually, it is Beltø who is asking. He believes Johannes is inspired by the eruption of Vesus. Johannes is said to have occasionally lived on Ischia sometime in the nineties after Christ. It was shortly after the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii and three smaller cities.

Creepy Americans

The plot itself opens with Beltø being pursued and threatened by some scary Americans. They demand that he find the original manuscript of the Book of Revelation. If he refuses, something will happen to his daughter Angelina. The adult daughter he first met in “Sølvmyntene” (2021) has now got a new girlfriend. His name is Toby and he only reads the Bible, believes that homosexuality is a sin and that women are subordinate to men. He is also obsessed with American basketball, likes country and thinks Trump is a visionary politician. I may not need to add that he does not make Angelina happy.

There are other obvious figures in this book, which are mainly assigned to the United States. Most frightening is the raving mad Adventist and televangelist Graystone. He chats with an angel of the abyss, Abaddon, and is happy to help Our Lord hasten Doomsday. It is also about a mysterious sect founded in the fifteenth century in a spectacular plot that eventually ends up in the White House.

Speculative monologues

The six could roll, I wrote about the Methusalem project (2022), Egeland’s previous Beltø crime. It too had a spectacular plot, but now it becomes too detailed, contrived and theoretical. Egeland spends far too much time on sources and facts and Beltø’s long speculative monologues – at the expense of an actual drive in the narrative.

Exactly that is even more clear in this book, which is almost impressively boring considering how good the idea is, and how much Egeland could make of it. The weakest thing is that it is all too predictable, and even the ending, which could have had James Bond dimensions, does not have any momentum.

This is a criticism that has affected Egeland almost since the first book, and one can wonder why he is unable to do anything about it. It could be so good!

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