Perhaps the biggest sensation in publishing from any genre last year was the late Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy featuring a certain woman with distinctive markings and an acute hunger for settling scores.
The late Swedish writer helped bring the mystery genre to a whole new level of popularity and might have made mystery fans out of many North American readers — ones who might not have been all that aware of the genre before.
If “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series whetted your appetite for character-driven crime writing — the kind made even edgier by the Northern European locale and flavour — check out “The Snowman,” the latest North American release by Norwegian crime fiction writer Jo Nesbo, whose novels and main character have garnered an almost fanatical following in many countries, but are just starting to gain wide scale attention in Canada and the United States.
Nesbo's hero detective is Harry Hole (pronounced hoo-leh), an emotionally battered and scarred homicide detective with an unusually keen understanding of humanity's darkest side.
“The Snowman” is the seventh novel to feature this central character, and it's as good a starting point as any to make his acquaintance — and to get a sense of what lies behind his craggy appeal.
Given the publishing world's newfound fetish for series books (hardly anyone ever writes a single book any longer) it's nice to know you can still pick up a title in a string of novels with a constant character and pretty much jump in; you don't have to start with the first.
In “The Snowman,” a particularly clever and inventive serial killer targets married mothers involved in extramarital affairs. His calling card is a snowman, its black eyes always facing the houses where his victims live.
Detective Harry Hole soon finds a disturbing common thread tying together old disappearance cases, and women go missing the day the first snow falls.
One thing that distinguishes this novel, and Nesbo's writing generally, is that he is a sharp and evocative stylist; Oslo in winter is cold enough, but Nesbo's writing techniques have the effect of darkening everything — even the way his characters interact — and a strong sense of doom pervades.
“The Snowman” is for fans of dark, atmospheric crime fiction, and you can be certain it will be on Canadian and American bestseller lists this season.
Highly recommended; ask for it at your public library.
Darrell Squires is assistant manager of Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries, West Newfoundland-Labrador division. You can contact him at: dsquires@nlpl.ca or by phone at 634-7333. His column appears every other week.
