Thursday, December 1, 2016

#51: The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

Harry Hole is a hard-living cop whose reputation as the best investigator in Oslo is tested by the emergence of a serial killer in Jo Nesbo's The Snowman.

I first discovered Nesbo reading The Redbreast, one of my favorite books of that year, and found his dark, action-packed crime stories the greatest successor to the late Stieg Larsson that I know of.

The Snowman is probably the best I've read in the series since.  It rockets from one plot twist to the next, and from one false lead to the next, ending in a cinematic showdown that is wholly satisfying.

But what really holds the book together is the flawed, mesmerizing character of Hole.  It helps to have followed the character through the previous books (if nothing else, to understand the identities of the people, all deceased, in the photographs on his office wall) but is not prohibitive to the mystery side.

I continue to enjoy this series and recommend it to readers of dark mysteries and thrillers, especially of the Scandinavian kind.

I listened to this on audiobook on loan from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

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