A Review By Frances Smith

 Since the discovery of the amazingly successful Stieg Larrson trilogy, several Scandinavian crime writers are now being translated into English, one of the most successful being Jo Nesbo.   The books are set in Oslo and Harry Hole is Nesbo’s dysfunctional detective.  In Nesbo’s hands, Oslo becomes, like the Oxford of Morse and the Edinburgh of Rebus, a dark and threatening place, full of shadows and mysteries.

Women disappear and outside the place they were last seen, a snowman silently appears, sometimes just an ordinary snowman with a carrot nose and charcoal eyes, sometimes something more grotesque, such as the one with a severed human head instead of a snowball.  Links between the missing women are found and then dismissed, various unpleasant characters emerge, and Hole himself is also threatened.  As the tension builds, we, like Harry, think we are on the path to a solutions when it suddenly turns in a new direction and we are totally confused once again.  The links in the chain are revealed to us only slightly more clearly than they are to Harry himself. 

“The Snowman” is not the first in the Harry Hole series, but is probably the best known, and Harry himself is a wonderful creation – always on the edge, an alchoholic just about in control, Oslo’s best detective but with a seriously flawed personality who is only just hanging on to the job he loves but also hates.  Wonderful stuff!