The mention of the Murri, at least in Harry's mind, makes him believe that a serial killer is at work, because the letter makes reference to a serial killer that Hole had once killed in Australia. What you should ask yourself is this: 'Who made the snowman? who makes snowmen? who gave birth to the Murri? For the snowman doesn't know.' And when the snow has gone, he will have taken someone else. Then Harry reveals that he had received an anonymous letter two months earlier that said: Hole gets the case, and immediately links it in his mind to an earlier case, still unsolved, where a housewife had gone missing after dropping off her children at a nursery. Deciding to go to the neighbor's house, he notices that the snowman that had been built in his yard (not by anyone in his family) is now wearing the scarf he'd given his mother for Christmas. His father had gone off to give a lecture in Bergen a day earlier his mom Birte was there when he went to bed, but now he can't find her anywhere. Then flash forward and it's 2004, and a young Jonas Becker wakes up to find that there's no one in the house.

The novel begins in 1980, with a young mother having an afternoon fling at her lover's home. Plus, as I've been known to ask before, who exactly made Stieg Larsson the be all and end all of Scandinavian crime fiction? In my humble opinion, Nesbø is the better writer. The two are completely different in terms of their writing styles and subjects. The Snowman is a novel of Scandinavian crime fiction, and my cover has a little sticker on it that says 'The Next Stieg Larsson,' but don't believe it. If you want to know more about Harry Hole, the official Jo Nesbo website features Hole's CV, as well as a link to all of the books in the series. The Snowman is Nesbø's fifth book to be translated into English, and once again features Harry Hole, a detective working for Oslo's crime squad.

The snowman by jo nesbø