The snowman

*Starred Review* At the beginning of Nesbø's latest Harry Hole novel, the Oslo police inspector is mostly sober and single, following his breakup with girlfriend Rakel. In the months since the events described in The Devil's Star (2010), he has devoted all his energy to work and exercise, indulging in cross-country runs and hours practicing speed cuffing, a skill he learned from Americans at a training program on serial killers. Late one night in November, during the first snow of the season, a young mother goes missing, leaving her son alone in the house. The only clue is a freshly built snowman. As Harry investigates, he becomes convinced that he is tracking a serial killer, but except for his new assistant, Katrine, his colleagues think he's obsessed and possibly losing it yet again. A recent transfer from Bergen, Katrine intrigues Harry. The reader is equally curious but for different reasons, as Nesbø makes it clear (but oh, so subtly) that something is not quite right about her, despite her excellent detective work. This is among the best entries in Nesbø's consistently superior series. He layers the suspense skillfully, deftly mixing scenes from the investigation with glimpses into Harry's always compelling personal life. Series readers will be pleased that Harry maintains a friendly relationship with Rakel and her son, Oleg. The Snowman is a great place for new readers to meet Norway's maverick detective.--Moyer, Jessica Copyright 2010 Booklist

On a cold Norwegian night, a young boy named Jonas wakes to find his mother missing from their home. Outside, in Jonas's yard, stands a solitary snowman wearing his mother's favorite scarf. Brought in to investigate the disappearance is frayed-around-the-edges police detective Harry Hole, who soon learns he's dealing with a serial killer calling himself the Snowman. As Hole delves into the case, he begins to suspect the Snowman has been murdering women for years. And to make matters worse the killer has chosen Hole as his opponent in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with twists and turns designed to drive the detective insane. Robin Sachs's cool, matter-of-fact narration fits the somber tone of Nesbo's thriller, his near whisper of a voice pulling the listener into the story as Hole desperately follows every lead in his efforts to stop the Snowman from killing again. Although Sachs skillfully brings all the book's characters to life, his portrayal of Hole shines the brightest: his depiction of Nesbo's nonconformist, borderline alcoholic, world-weary detective will leave listeners hungry for the next audiobook in the series. A Knopf hardcover. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Norwegian detective Harry Hole is in a quandary-he's an expert on serial killers in a country that prides itself on not having any. Yet women are being murdered on the day of the first snowfall, their bodies enmeshed with or guarded by eerily watchful snowmen. Hole has to convince his peers that the murders are the work of a serial killer, so he tracks The Snowman. But soon questions arise-who is stalking whom? And for what purpose? Nesbo (The Devil's Star; Nemesis; The Redbreast) is also a musician and composer. His latest thriller reads like a symphony, from the thundering first chords that pull the reader into a magical world through the delicately enticing development in which motifs and story strands are woven together leading to a pounding, furious conclusion. VERDICT Nesbo is being hailed as the next Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell; this work is being compared to Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow, among others. Apt comparisons, but they don't go far enough. This is simply the best detective novel this reviewer has read in years. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/10; 150,000-copy first printing; six-city tour.]-David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ. Lib., Institute (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Erica Jong meets Stephen King meets, yes, Stieg Larsson in this superb thriller, the eighth by Norwegian mystery writer Nesb.Oslo detective Harry Hole returns, world-weary as ever, to puzzle out some very strange, and very discomfiting, events. The opening is very Scandinavian indeed: two people not married to each other are experiencing some extracurricular blissthe Erica Jong partwhen one notices that they're being watched, whereupon the woman's kid, waiting in a car in the wintry outsidethe Scandinavian partinforms his mom, "We're going to die"and not just because Ronald Reagan has just been elected. The thing is, it's a snowman that's doing the watching, and from that fact no good thing can emerge. Nesb is to be complimented: It's one of the creepiest opening scenes in recent memory, even if the lovemaking has a sort of late-1970s West German soft-porn feel to it. Fast-forward 24 years, when the Norwegians are worried about Dubya, and Hole is on the case of more snowman hijinks, helped along by his fellow officers of the Politioverbetjent (the Crime Squad, that is), one of whom is "attractive without trying" and makes a fine lure for mayhem. Things get creepier as the scene shifts from substation to plastic surgeon's office to coroner's gurney, when Harry announces, "I just have the feeling that someone is watching me the whole time, that someone is watching me now. I'm part of someone's plan." So he is, and the story resolves with a nice edgy twist that would do Larsson proud. Harry is pleasingly human, with a capacity for hard, grueling work being one of his best features, and the rest of the characters say and do believable things, the murderous snowman notwithstanding. The Norwegian settings are sometimes exotic, sometimes just grimywho knew that Oslo had a high-crime area?but always appropriate to the story, which unfolds at just the right pace.The smart, suspenseful cat-and-mouse game will remind some readers of Erik Skjoldbjrg's 1997 filmInsomniaand that's high praise indeed.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.