Jo Nesbo - Police

reviewed live on bookshow by Sue Major November 2013 

 Jo Nesbo is a Norwegian writer of some stature, only first published in English in 1997. His Inspector Harry Hole series is hugely successful, yet he manages to keep a freshness and an unpredictability in all his books ….and this is just one reason why I enjoy them so much.

”Police” is the  ninth in his Harry Hole series.

 This story centres around a killer who stalks Oslo's policemen and brutally kills them at the sites of previously unsolved crimes. This story is definitely  not for the faint-hearted....nor for the squeamish; there are numerous  grim murders with just as many suspects and blind alleys.

In spite of the fact that Inspector Hole has left the police force and is now a lecturer in criminal studies( and that's not without its challenges) he is of course drawn into the investigation....and all his old enemies ,friends and colleagues are there with him. His demons are also still around and I found myself at one point saying out loud “ no, Harry, don't do it!”

Police” is, I think, one of Jo Nesbo's best yet;

It   is  a first class thriller that races along  with clever plots and sub-plots twisting and turning as it goes. If you are a fan of Harry Hole already or keen on Scandinavian murder/mysteries than this is the book for you....it's great.

Jo Nesbo - The Snowman

Review by showhost sept 2010.
I bought this book (great deal in a supermarket!) as it claimed to be 'the next Stieg Larsson'. Why the claim? Dunno! Larsson was Swedish, Nesbo is Norwegian, but they are both Scandinavian, male and thriller writers. However one thing Nesbo lacks is a great lead character which rivals Lisbet Salander. Also, I definately rate Larsson above Nesbo.
As with Larsson, you have to not let the foreign names of people and places put you off reading it. It may be helpful to jot down the christian name or surname of a character next to what they do or are just to remind you where they are in relation to the plot..
Harry Hole is the main character in the story.
Alcoholic, Inspector Hole of the Oslo Police Crime Squad, with the usual disastrous romantic relationships.
Harry has studied 'serial killers' in the USA, much to the amusement of his colleagues as they have never had a serial killer in Norway. When Harry starts to find a connection with new and old murders his colleagues think he is trying to make a serial killer out of a coincidence.
The coincidences become too much to ignore, women who have had a child fathered by another man, a fact which generally is unknown to the man calling himself the father, children who have a medical condition and who, prior to the murder of the mother, had a doctors appointment and the crowning glory a Snowman. The killer builds a snowman outside the house of his next victim before the kill - it's his calling card. This serial killer is nicknamed the Snowman and it wants Harry to catch him if he can........
There is a hint of who the killer is halfway through the book, but even at the end when you know who it is you are still glued to the story. Although, it got a little confusing at times as it switched from one time to another.
It's a clever whodunnit, a gripping thriller with more twists than a corkscrew. It grabs hold of you and slowly drags you in.
No, he is not the next Larsson but I will definitely read another of his.

Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

review by Corinna Christopher on show 14th July

Harry Hole is at it again !! The Norwegian detective already famous for solving the Snowman murders is once more at the heart of this book, although I could wish sometimes to have a normal detective not one permanently recovering from an excess of alcohol – the details at times were almost too authentic !

At the start of the book Harry is in Hong Kong trying to forget the trauma of the Snowman case. When he is tracked down he reluctantly agrees to return to Norway as his father is seriously ill in hospital.

Back on his home turf he is seconded into the Crime Squad to help solve some recent murders. Two young women have been horribly tortured and killed. The murder weapon being an ingenious golden ball which stuffed into their mouths is then operated by pulling a thread thus operating steel needles into their cheeks and causing them to bleed to death. This gadget was known as Leopolds Apple.
Before too long there are more victims and the connection between them relates to a night they all spent in an isolated mountain hostel.

Harry with his intuitive brain is in competition with Kripos another official organisation who are also trying to solve the crime , hotly pursued by the Media who are anxious for answers.

As with previous Nesbo thrillers there are many twists and turns, several characters to keep track of and constant furthering of the plot . The background is Oslo and surrounds, with two forays into the Congo. Many diverse leads result in false conclusions before the eventual result.

During the book there are tantalising words and thoughts from the killer just to tease the reader, however chapter headings are helpful.

Nesbo has crafted a very gripping thriller but it is wrong to describe him as the next Stieg Larrson since he has quite a different writing style.
In addition to reading “The Snowman” I have also read “The Devil’s Star”which is equally good.
review by Corinna

Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia

review by Malcolm on show 27th Jan
I think Linda chose me to read this because of my avid reading of Nordic Noir – the likes of Steig Larsson, Henning Mankell and more recently Jo Nesbo. In contrast to Nesbo’s Snowman I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – I felt it captured my perceived images of Iceland well, the plot developed nicely and the writing and translation style was easy to read even if people and names were sometimes a little unfamiliar.

Anyway from the back cover:

“One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam at her holiday cottage. At first sight, it appears like a straightforward case of suicide; María had never recovered from the death of her mother two years previously and she had a history of depression. But then the friend who found her body approaches Detective Erlendur with a tape of a séance that María attended before her death and his curiosity is aroused… etc.”

That’s from the cover. Of course it turns into a murder investigation and Detective Elendur finds out that Maria was obsessed with seeing her mother in the afterlife and with her Doctor husband’s assistance attempts a near death experience – but unknowingly her husband is having an affair with the Mystic from the séance – and all goes badly wrong for Maria. The author nicely ties up all the loose ends in Erlendur’s investigations, he solves the murder and finds the bodies of the missing boy and girl from the past – but he does not find what happened to his missing brother – I expect he will one day in another of the Reykjavik Murder Mysteries.

I highly recommend this and will certainly be reading more.

Malcolm F. Martland Broadcast on RadioScilly 107.9FM 27 January 2011

show 11th Nov 2010

Grab your cuppa tea it’s the Bookshow on radio scilly 107.9fm. On the show this week is Guru (Ro) Bennett and Malcolm (all things great & small)Martland. Welcome back to Malcolm hope you are fully recovered. Books being reviewed are:
Between Sisters by Adwoa Badoe , Giles Coren Anger Mangement for Beginners, The Barn Dance by James Twyman, Jo Nesbo The Snowman.
Anger Mangement for Beginners, so did it work then Malcolm – NO IT DIDN’T!!

Hakan Nesser - Borkmanns Point

book review by showhost nov 2013

this is the first book by this author that I have read but as it is another nordic noir author (Swedish) I thought I'd give it a go as I carry on with my quest to find another as good as Steig Larsson.  Nesser is three time winner of the best Swedish Crime Novel Award, winner of european Crime fiction Star Award and shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger award.  It was published in 1994, and the first to be translated into English.

On the cover it states: an 'Inspector Van Veeteren mystery'. 

Inspector VV is quite a laid back character who is given to deep thinking and enjoys chess.  He is a warm, character who likes good wine and good company and toothpicks which I imagine must get on the nerves of his colleagues!  There is some subtle wit dialogue which stops it from being like the gruesome, usual serial killer type novel.  Inspector VV is on holiday when he is called in to assist the local authorities near where he is taking his leave.  Two men, with no apparent link, are brutally murdered with an axe, months apart, in the quiet, coastal town of Kaalbringen.  The chief of police there is winding down to his retirement and would like to get the case solved before he retires.

Inspector VV doesn't seem to be getting near to solving the case and calls in one of his men 'Munster', to assist along with the local police staff.  When a third body is discovered with the same death blows the community are becoming very nervous.  The police appeal for witnesses, the past of all three victims are detailed to try to find a link.  An extensive 35 page report is assembled but still no clue.  Have they reached Borkmanns point?  One of the local detectives, young female, thinks she may have found something in the report and leaves a message on Munsters phone to that effect arranging to meet him at 7.30pm.

She doesn't turn up, she is last seen jogging along the beach at 6.45, by Inpsector VV himself.

They need to get the breakthrough and soon but will their colleague be dead or alive they don't know.

It was slow to get going and is never a fast paced book like Simon Kernick's but the build up is deliberate and eventually consuming.  You learn to ignore the place names as it doesn't mean anything to us & doesn't detract from the story.  I quite enjoyed this crime book but def not Steig Larsson but then to me neither is Jo Nesbo.

Oh, yes, so what is Borkmanns Point, you may ask?  Well quote from book: its Bormanns rule, more a landmark for tricky cases.  In every investigation there comes a point beyond which we don't really need any more information.  When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more than some decent thinking. (this apparently was the muse of a snr officer VV worked with when he was younger & who he admired & respected).

Jo Nesbo - The Snowman

Review by Corinna Christopher
The author is a musician and economist from Norway and this book is the fifth crime novel translated into English and featuring Harry Hole. They have been a great success achieving rave reviews and likened to the Millenium trilogy of Stieg Larsson.

It would be difficult to describe in detail the core plot of the book suffice to say it is all about the pursuit of “The Snowman”. Harry Hole is the crime Inspector of Oslo Police Force and has with his colleagues the task of solving a particularly nasty series of murders, mainly of married women who have children. In the police department we have a clutch of interesting characters including the enigmatic Katrine Bratt who is not who she appears to be and harbours a terrible secret.

There are some chilling scenes and uncomfortable scenarios for the reader to grapple with before the ultimate denouement. The elusive “Snowman” is built at the crime scenes to tantalise the Police and the serial killer always seems to be one step ahead of his pursuers.
This is a big exciting thriller of a book which engages one right from the start. Particularly good were the numerous red herrings, each time Harry Hole thought he had the killer in his sights it turned out wrong and we were led on with another nail-biting clue, It truly kept the reader on his toes and continually turning the pages.

“The Snowman” however, is quite different from the Steig Larsson books apart from the different Scandinavian countries. The characters bear no resemblance and neither does the plot. It should be judged entirely on its merit.

I found it slightly ironical that both Norway and Sweden with such small populations should have all these terrible crimes in their main cities and also that so many of the people had fractured and disturbed personalities /

If you love unusual thrillers with interesting backgrounds this is the book for you. Highly recommended.

review by Corinna

Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

The first book I read by this author I thought was ok but a few holes in the plot.

this book was slightly better but nowhere near the league of Steig Larsson.

Harry Hole is a character from other novels.  Inspector Harry Hole works for the Oslo police force.  he is still trying to come to terms over the death of his work partner and find out who did it.

At the start of the book Harry is watching the video footage of a bank robbery in which a cashier is shot in the head.  He has been assigned a new partner Beate Lonn.  Her father was an inspector but killed in the line of duty.  Beate has an unusual talent she memorises faces.  After watching the video footage of the robbery they are convinced that the hooded bank robber knew the cashier and theat the shooting was premeditated. He is assigned to run a parallel investigation into this robbery which has now become a murder investigation as well.  This also keeps him away from a couple of his colleagues for whom there is animosity on both sides.

Harry is in a new and happy relationship but the new love of his life is in Russia fighting for custody of her child.  Harry is contacted by his ex-lover who needs to speak to him - against his better judgement he meets her for dinner.  The next day Harry is called to a murder scene, it is his ex-lovers body found in her flat where he went for dinner but Harry has no recollection of the previous evening.  He awoke with a blinding headache at his home and presumed he had drunk too much as usual.  The crime scene points to a suicide.  Only Harry notices certain elements which make him sure it was murder - but was it him?  he doesn't divulge the fact that he was at her flat the night before as the police are happy it was suicide and he doesn't want to jeopardies his current relationship.  He decides to run his own investigation in private alongside the bank murder.

As you can expect the situation becomes more complicated, Harry receives anonymous emails from someone who knows his secret and he becomes wanted by the police as a suspect.

The story gets very, very complicated with new twists springing up all the time. Its as if he was going to end the sroty then thinks no! I'll put another little twist in here just to fill the pages!

 Also, some really strange sayings like:

He was here so many times you would have found (finger) prints even if he had been

there was nothing to see just thick damp mist which lay like a used nappy over the town.

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