The Snowman by Jo Nesbø

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“We all know how chilling a Snowman can be. But could they be frightening?
The answer is in Jo Nesbo’s THE SNOWMAN.”

Set in the exotic locations like Oslo and Bergen, Harry Hole’s seventh adventure in the series is quite a chilling thriller. Imagine Norway in winter, certainly more chilly.

Due to Nesbo’s recent popularity due to his translated works, I decided to five him a try. Also I am a fan of crime/mystery fiction, but this year I have decided to diversify my reading and read less number of books related to aforementioned particular genre.

After reading Stieg Larsson and now Jo Nesbo, I have made an observation that Scandinavian writers have that perspective of naturalism of story telling especially in modern day crime writers. Ian Rankin and Donna Leon are two others who are not Scandinavian, and who have this ability. When they create a plot, it looks so simple yet realistic but the complexity in the plot increases as the reality fastens its grip on a human’s mind just like in the real world and this results in increase in the interest of a reader in that particular form of writing. This complexity is good and does not restrain irrelevant form of details just to bugger off a reader. Nesbo’s The Snowman is an example.

Plot begins when a boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees a snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf.

Harry Hole, an anti-hero police investigator, suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. His investigation deepens as he battles down with his own inner demons.

The book is full of suspense and contain enough twists that will you guessing through most of the it. It becomes predictable in the end when the author is left with the last item in his magic hat. But that’s not the point. What impressed him is how neatly the plot moves with the characters simultaneously and results in creating a sensational feeling in a reader’s mind which is what we call the thrill.

Book’s pace goes well along with the plot though in between it’s a bit of a drag, but I managed to cope with that and I am sure you will also.

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