Note: This novel was WINNER of The Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize for Best Novel of the Year 2007.
“Harry could feel the adrenalin rush, the trembling that always came when he got first scent of the [murderer]. And after the rush came the Great Obsession. Which was everything at once: love and intoxication, blindness and clear-sightedness, meaning and madness. Colleagues spoke now and then about excitement, but this was something else, something special.”
In his fifth novel starring Oslo police inspector Harry Hole and his fellow officers, author Jo Nesbo moves in a new direction. His first English translation, The Redbreast, is a historically based mystery involving Norway’s Nazi past and its neo-Nazi present and was chosen in 2004 by Norwegian book clubs as the Best Norwegian Crime Novel Ever Written. His next novels, Nemesis, The Devil’s Star, and The Redeemer, are unusual “domestic” mysteries, all huge successes, not just in Scandinavia but throughout Europe. The Snowman, Nesbo’s latest release, is a complete surprise with its element of horror and may soon become his most popular novel here in the U.S., a breakthrough novel which may finally put to rest the misperception that the Norwegian Nesbo is some kind of “successor” to the Swedish Stieg Larsson.
It takes nothing away from Larsson and his terrific Millenium trilogy to say that Nesbo is a more versatile and more polished writer who has now written sixteen novels since 1997, including three children’s novels, all of them big successes in Scandinavia. He has received eight major prizes for his work and four “shortlist” nominations. If you enjoy tantalizing mysteries in the “Nordic Noir” genre and have not yet discovered Nesbo, I guarantee that when you do, you will not ever compare him to any other Scandinavian writer.
The novel opens dramatically in 1980, as Sara, a young mother with her son in the car, makes a stop at the home of her lover for a last goodbye. They are shocked to discover that their love-making is observed by a snowman whose face has appeared at the window. When the mother returns, belatedly, to her car, her young son has locked the doors to keep out the “snowman,” fearing that “We’re going to die.”
Funicular going up Mount Ulriken
Nothing more is heard about this episode, but in 1992, a terrible murder and dismemberment takes place on top of Mt. Ulriken in Bergen. A snowman is found across the plateau from the mountain, seeming to observe the scene. Later, in 2004, Birte Becker, mother of young Jonas, disappears from Oslo, her pink scarf eventually discovered around the neck of a backyard snowman. Evidence gathered by the police suggests that a serial killer may be at large—similar disappearances and murders have taken place on the day of the first snow each year since 1992, and all have had a snowman on the scene, though these were not recognized as part of a pattern until now, 2004. Police inspector Harry Hole is put in charge in Oslo, with connections to the national Central Investigation Bureau (Kripos). Harry, an alcoholic who lives alone, is totally dedicated to his work, an undeniably honest man with little patience for paperwork, department egos, and red tape, and he is given only two weeks and four assistants to investigate the series of new disappearances.
The curling venue is behind this home of Vidkund Quisling
Soon he is being taunted by the Snowman—his every move seemingly controlled by the Snowman, whose sole purpose seems to be to deflect suggestions of involvement in the crimes onto innocent people. As the body count rises and the frustration of Harry Hole and the police increases, the biggest question is how these different disappearances and/or murders are all connected, apart from the snowmen. The biggest clue is that most of the victims are young mothers with children. The next question is where are the bodies of the missing women which might give rise to clues?
Amundsen’s ship, at the Fram Boat Museum
In the midst of all the turmoil involving the disappearances and the effects on the distraught families, Harry is trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to stay on the straight and narrow. His long-time love, Rakel, who broke up with him over his drinking and his continued absences, has found peace with a new lover and is planning a wedding. She continues to see Harry occasionally or send messages, partly because of her son Oleg, who has adored Harry since the time when they all lived together, but their relationship seems to be over. Other characters from past novels appear here. Beate Lonn, an expert on facial recognition, is now caring for her baby son, born after the death of Halvorsen, who was her lover and Harry’s partner. Harry still blames himself for Halvorsen’s death. The smarmy Magnus Skarre is still working for the police in Oslo and still making Harry’s life miserable. And a new female recruit, Katrine Bratt, is introduced and impresses Harry with her diligence and intelligence.
Holmenkollen Ski Jump, photo by Julien de Smedt
It is impossible to describe the complexity and cleverness of this plot without risking spoilers, and the novel is too much fun to read to risk that. Suffice it to say, the novel is detailed and intelligent, and will keep even the most jaded mystery lover intrigued and wanting to see how it is all resolved. Medical mysteries run parallel with the murders, old mysteries from the cold case files get dredged up and investigated, characters are not who they appear to be, and who the Snowman is and exactly how he is able to pull off his crimes with the whole country watching keep the reader on tenterhooks. The coincidences here bear little correspondence to real life, of course, though they make the story fly, but then, again, how many murders have you heard of with a snowman as a possible murderer? When the last little piece falls into place at the end, every detail at every point in the novel suddenly all makes sense—and provides a satisfying sense of finality to this challenging case. A non-stop thriller that may very well keep you up reading till the wee hours—and great fun!
Note: Those who have not read any of the previous Harry Hole mysteries should not fear to tackle this one. Jo Nesbo is a considerate author who provides all the background needed for the characters who repeat.
Also by Nesbo: THE REDBREAST, NEMESIS, THE DEVIL’S STAR, THE REDEEMER, HEADHUNTERS, THE LEOPARD, ,PHANTOM, THE BAT, POLICE, COCKROACHES (1998), THE SON (2014), BLOOD ON SNOW (2015), THE THIRST (2017), KNIFE (2019)
Photos, in order: The author ‘s photo is from: http://www.scandinavianbooks.com
The funicular going up Mt. Ulriken, where a murder occurred, appears here: http://www.panoramio.com
The curling venue where Dr. Idar Vetlesen and Arve Stop practice for curling matches is on the back of the Villa Grande (pictured here), where Vidkund Quisling once lived. A politician who seized power in a Nazi-led coup d’etat, Quisling became the pawn of the Nazis during the Norwegian occupation and was executed for high treason after the war. His house is now a Norwegian Cultural Center housing the Center for Holocaust Studies. http://www.chgs.umn.edu
Harry Hole and Rakel Fauke, the love of his life, have a rare meeting at the Fram Boat Museum. The Fram took Roald Amundsen to Antarctica in 1911, where he beat Robert Falcon Scott in the race to the Pole. http://www.pbase.com
The Holmenkollen Ski Jump and Skiing Museum is the site of the climactic scene in the novel. http://www.dezeen.com
Good video interview with Nesbo about this novel here: www.amazon.com
Author Dieter Schlesak was only ten years old when the Russians invaded his town of Sighisoara in German Transylvania (now Rumania) in August 1944, and he has been struggling to understand the Holocaust and how it happened ever since. He had tried to write a novel about it once before, he says in a statement written in February, 2011, but he “threw 450 pages of an ‘author’s text’ into the wastebasket, because I, as an author, have absolutely no mandate, and could never, even stylistically or linguistically, approach such horror, which [the poet] Adorno had already announced in his [own] verdict on Auschwitz.” Adorno had famously stated in 1949 that “After Auschwitz, poetry is no longer possible.”
The transcripts from several trials are used for background and detail here. The Nuremberg Trials of 1945 and 1946, tried twenty-four of the biggest criminals, with many other lesser-ranked officials who were witnesses in that trial turned over to Poland for later prosecution in 1947. That trial, called the First Auschwitz Trial, resulted in many more convictions. A third trial, in Frankfurt from December, 1963 – August, 1965, convicted even more of the lesser officials, including many of the people mentioned in this book. It is the conflicting testimony from the Frankfurt trials, provided by SS guards, administrators, and camp survivors, on which the author draws for much of his detail here—creating a fascinating portrait of some of the monsters of Auschwitz as they try to save their own lives and reputations fully twenty years after the war. The author’s own
commentary about how so many people seem to have come to believe that they really did not have a choice and therefore were innocent gets into the psychology of power, with some of these officers and administrators testifying (and seeming to really believe) that they were not present for events in which they were clearly present, some of them trying to doctor the records before the trial, and others manufacturing alibis through innocent friends with whom they had contact in the twenty years since the war.
friends the author knew in Sighisoara, along with the few survivors he was able to interview much later, the character of Adam is far more comprehensive (and sometimes contradictory) than the typical narrator would be. Though he gives the numbers of deaths per day, week, month, and year, the sheer size of these totals is overwhelming, and the little details become even more memorable. As the war comes to an end, the deaths of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz increase, on the orders of Adolf Eichmann and two of his accomplices. SS guards and officers, suddenly worried that their own subordinates will testify against them for what they have done as the war winds down, plan the executions of their own men to save themselves.
m has accomplished a remarkable feat. He has written a fascinating story in which marriage is less the result of true love than it is of logic, the resulting union resembling a merger more than a deeply human relationship; passion here has more to do with self-gratification than with true feeling; and Alex, the main character, is so ego-centric that it is difficult to imagine any thoughtful, sensitive woman wanting to have anything at all to do with him. But that is part of the point. None of the three main characters here—Alex and his two lovers–are emotionally mature, and none of them grow much during the almost twenty years that pass in the course of this novel. Still, by the end of the novel, the reader will have a fine picture of what true love is, however negatively the characters behave in their own lives and however much damage they may do to the other people who share their lives. The negative emphasis actually accentuates the wonder of the positive for the reader.
onia, also in the school of architecture, soon after, he is preoccupied with the enormous social gap between them, Sonia, from a wealthy family, and he, a struggling student. “I couldn’t picture her as my girlfriend, not in bed, not even naked…She was like one of those dolls whose clothes are sewn onto their bodies.” Though he and Sonia begin to see each other socially, he still visits Ivona, with whom he feels “a kind of overwhelming safety…[though] it was only in bed that I liked being with her…The thing that kept me fascinated was her utter devotion.” His relationship with Sonia begins to develop platonically and then more romantically, but “[With her] I didn’t feel so much in love as happy and confident and maybe proud.” He becomes increasingly obsessed with Ivona sexually, however, though she embarrasses him, and he does not want his friends or Sonia to know about her.
rs, again in keeping with Alex’s own personality. Alex happily accompanies the much more creative Sonia on trips to Marseilles and Stuttgart to see brilliant examples of architecture by Le Corbusier, her favorite, while he prefers the more traditional work of Aldo Rossi, much of it in Berlin. Their architectural company grows, employing twenty people, with Alex handling the business end and Sonia doing the creative. The novel concludes three years after the party that takes place at the gallery in the opening scene.
on others, even as she ages, a victim rather than an active participant in her own life. Ultimately, the characters do change in the course of the twenty years of this novel’s action, but it is up to the reader to decide to what extent each will be able to understand and feel real love—or even become fully human.
lbacka, Sweden, a small fishing village in western Sweden might seem like a quiet, peaceful place, but as readers of Camilla Lackberg’s previous novel, 
A reporter of cricket matches who also wrote the cricket-tour book Pundits from Pakistan, Indian national Rahul Bhattacharya spent some time in Guyana covering matches in 2003 – 2004, so enjoying the country that he decided to return again later to spend an entire year meeting new people and exploring places most outsiders never come to know. The result is a unique travel book of great originality, chock full of outlandish characters, trips to places the reader will not even have imagined, and risky adventures to the interior.
diary, with events unfolding more or less at random, instead of a carefully planned and organized novel with a controlled set of characters and a fully developed plot leading to a climax and resolution. The only character here with any real depth is the narrator, and he is constantly on the move in search of new adventures. Virtually all the other characters here live “on the edge” and speak a variety of pidgin, with the dialogue often containing vocabulary that the reader must figure out by context.
lly colorful characters as they go by bus, jeep, motorboat, plane, and for hours on foot to the interior to “work the water.” Throughout, the author fills this journey with local color—the houses on stilts, car shells “growing out of the mud, shot through with razorgrass,” “run-over dogs ground into the asphalt,” sandpits big enough to swallow whole villages, and “river and bush and forest tugging at each other.” Everything here is larger than life: Kaieteur Falls, five times higher than Niagara; the tank bromeliad, about fifteen feet tall; and the camoudi, a Guyanese anaconda, reported to grow up to forty feet long.
(and is, of course, under no obligation to include) information about the hard-working middle-class in Guyana, especially in Georgetown, as that group is not really relevant in his stories, nor, it seems, does he meet people who speak English as grammatically as he himself does—though there are educated Guyanese who speak grammatically, too. Many of these citizens do not leave the country for better jobs, choosing to stay where they are, working to improve their own country and improve the schooling for their children. This book is a lively account of those who live on the fringes, taking big risks and chances, and surviving any way they can. Those who are looking for a balanced picture of Guyana, a country of extraordinary beauty and much charm, will want to look elsewhere.
