Jo Nesbo - The Snowman

Review by Malcolm on show 11th Nov.
This book is labelled as "the next Steig Larssen" but apart from being written by Scandinavian, there is little else to compare the two. It is a detective story through and through, led by the amusingly named Inspector Harry Hole and set in and around Oslo and Bergen. There are more comparisons to the Kurt Wallander novels of Henning Mankell, and but with none of the lugubrious analysis of Swedish nationalism that is so prevalent in Steig Larsson and Henning Mankell's novels.

The Snowman is the signature of the killer, so predictably, his murders only occur in winter. Sometimes the Snowman just contains or wears clues, but in one instance, it also bears the head of the victim perched neatly on the top. The victims are all women, women who have been unfaithful to their partners. In fact, the novel opens with a raunchy scene of just such a woman who has left her child in the car while she makes love to a man with no nipples! Therein lies the first clue, and of course she disappears. The next day, all remaining of her being a headscarf around the neck of the Snowman built outside her child's bedroom.



Harry Hole, whose life and household is in a total mess, is set to investigate these murders as he is the only Norwegian detective with any experience of serial killers. He is given the assistance of the newly appointed drop dead gorgeous detective Katrine Bratt from Bergen. But she is not all she seems!



Investigations into the spouses and children of the victims reveal that several children had been submitted to tests for a rare genetic disorder, one which results in a degenerative neurological condition, and coincidently, no nipples! And just to add a chill several victims' bodies appear in dissection tanks at the local anatomy school. I'm not sure how much of this, the author is making up but as a Carry On detective series, it's not bad.



But one piece of police procedure I cannot forgive the author for getting so badly wrong, unless they are just so slack in Norway that nobody notices. Some 11 years previously, two women had disappeared in Bergen and were assumed to have been victims of the Snowman. However, the investigating officer, the light fingered Gert Rafto aka Iron Rafto also disappeared without a trace. Then, 11 years later, when Harry Hole and Katrine Bratt, visit Bergen to investigate they find that Gert Rafto had a summer cabin on a small island, part of a police funded leisure scheme for officers. Harry and Katrine, take a trip out the cabin and in the cellar they find a freezer with a padlock on it. They break it open and outfalls the body of Gert Rafto frozen solid, like a snowman. His nose had been pulled off and replaced with a carrot and a row of black carpet tacks have been nailed his face in a grimace. There is no mention at all why the police did not investigate the property of an officer who disappeared so long ago, and property funded by the police as well. But none of the participants in the novel seem to bat an eyelid about this and carry on as if nothing was wrong with the fact that they've neglected their duties, all those years ago. My credibility began to get a little thin at this point. In addition, one by one suspects are found dead and proclaimed as the Snowman, although in reality, the Snowman minus nipples still lurks and Harry Hole rises to the challenge again, just in time to save his career for the next novel.

Malcolm F Martland, broadcast 11 November 2010 Radio Scilly 107.9 FM