The Snowman

March 28, 2011
In this chilling installment in Nesbø's Insp. Harry Hole crime series (The Devil's Star, etc.), a snowman left in the front yard of Birte Becker's Oslo house is the only clue to the woman's disappearance. When Sylvia Ottersen disappears from her farmhouse soon afterward, the snowman the killer leaves behind has a gruesome addition: Sylvia's severed head. Harry, aided by Katrine Bratt, a brash new member of his team with secrets of her own, combs through past missing person cases, looking for other victims of the killer now dubbed the Snowman. Several months earlier, Harry received an anonymous letter referring to both snowmen and the Australian serial killer he'd pursued early in his career. What appeared random and bizarre then now takes on new meaning as Harry realizes the killer is taunting him. Nesbø breathes new life into the serial killer subgenre, giving it a Norwegian twist and never losing his laconic hero in the process. 150,000 first printing; 6-city author tour.

Starred review from May 1, 2011

Erica Jong meets Stephen King meets, yes, Stieg Larsson in this superb thriller, the eighth by Norwegian mystery writer Nesbø.

Oslo detective Harry Hole returns, world-weary as ever, to puzzle out some very strange, and very discomfiting, events. The opening is very Scandinavian indeed: two people not married to each other are experiencing some extracurricular bliss—the Erica Jong part—when one notices that they're being watched, whereupon the woman's kid, waiting in a car in the wintry outside—the Scandinavian part—informs his mom, "We're going to die"—and not just because Ronald Reagan has just been elected. The thing is, it's a snowman that's doing the watching, and from that fact no good thing can emerge. Nesbø is to be complimented: It's one of the creepiest opening scenes in recent memory, even if the lovemaking has a sort of late-1970s West German soft-porn feel to it. Fast-forward 24 years, when the Norwegians are worried about Dubya, and Hole is on the case of more snowman hijinks, helped along by his fellow officers of the Politioverbetjent (the Crime Squad, that is), one of whom is "attractive without trying" and makes a fine lure for mayhem. Things get creepier as the scene shifts from substation to plastic surgeon's office to coroner's gurney, when Harry announces, "I just have the feeling that someone is watching me the whole time, that someone is watching me now. I'm part of someone's plan." So he is, and the story resolves with a nice edgy twist that would do Larsson proud. Harry is pleasingly human, with a capacity for hard, grueling work being one of his best features, and the rest of the characters say and do believable things, the murderous snowman notwithstanding. The Norwegian settings are sometimes exotic, sometimes just grimy—who knew that Oslo had a high-crime area?—but always appropriate to the story, which unfolds at just the right pace.

The smart, suspenseful cat-and-mouse game will remind some readers of Erik Skjoldbjærg's 1997 film Insomnia—and that's high praise indeed.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2010

After his mother disappears, young Jonas finds a snowman on the lawn with her pink scarf about its neck. Other women vanish into Oslo's frigid air, and police investigator Harry Hole finds himself driven to the brink by a particularly dexterous and menacing killer. A Glass Key award winner who has helped put Scandinavian crime fiction on top (five million copies of his books have been sold worldwide), Nesbo here switches to a new American publisher--the very one that gave us Stieg Larsson. Essential for thriller collections; with a six-city tour.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2011
At the beginning of Nesbs latest Harry Hole novel, the Oslo police inspector is mostly sober and single, following his breakup with girlfriend Rakel. In the months since the events described in The Devils Star (2010), he has devoted all his energy to work and exercise, indulging in cross-country runs and hours practicing speed cuffing, a skill he learned from Americans at a training program on serial killers. Late one night in November, during the first snow of the season, a young mother goes missing, leaving her son alone in the house. The only clue is a freshly built snowman. As Harry investigates, he becomes convinced that he is tracking a serial killer, but except for his new assistant, Katrine, his colleagues think hes obsessed and possibly losing it yet again. A recent transfer from Bergen, Katrine intrigues Harry. The reader is equally curious but for different reasons, as Nesb makes it clear (but oh, so subtly) that something is not quite right about her, despite her excellent detective work. This is among the best entries in Nesbs consistently superior series. He layers the suspense skillfully, deftly mixing scenes from the investigation with glimpses into Harrys always compelling personal life. Series readers will be pleased that Harry maintains a friendly relationship with Rakel and her son, Oleg. The Snowman is a great place for new readers to meet Norways maverick detective.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)