The Snowman
Jo Nesbo, 2011
Random House
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307742995
Summary
Internationally acclaimed crime writer Jo Nesbo’s antihero police investigator, Harry Hole, is back: in a bone-chilling thriller that will take Hole to the brink of insanity.
Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf.
Hole 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. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised—and constantly revised—by the killer.
Fiercely suspenseful, its characters brilliantly realized, its atmosphere permeated with evil, The Snowman is the electrifying work of one of the best crime writers of our time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 29, 1960
• Where—Oslo, Norway
• Education—Norwegian School of Economics
• Currently—lives in Oslo
Jo Nesbo is a Norwegian author, musician, and former business analyst, whose books have been translated into over 50 languages and sold 23 million copies.
Personal
Nesbo grew up in Molde. He played top-flight football (soccer) for Molde FK until he tore the cruciate ligaments in his knee at the age of 18. When he could no longer play sports, he signed up for military service, spending spent three years in Norway's far north. Later he applied to and was accepted at the Norwegian School of Economics.
Graduating with a degree in Economics and Business Administration, Nesbo worked as a stockbroker and then financial analyst. He also found time to form a rock band as main vocalist and songwriter. Although the band—Di Derre (Them There)—topped the Norwegian charts with its second album—and their concerts were all sell-outs—Nesbo continued crunching numbers by day while gigging at night.
Eventually exhausted and burned out, Nesbo took flight, literally, to Australia. On the airplane for 30 hours, he fleshed out a story on his laptop—about a guy named Harry—and the rest is publishing history.
In addition to writing and music, Nesbo is a dedicated rock climber and has climbed sport routes up to French grade 7c. He lives close to his former wife and their daughter in Oslo.
Harry Hole
Nesbo is primarily known for his 10 crime novels featuring Inspector Harry Hole, a tough detective working for Crime Squad and later with the National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos). His investigations take him from Oslo to Australia and the Congo Republic. Hole takes on seemingly unconnected cases, involving a range of criminals: serial killers, bank robbers, gangsters, or the establishment. But he also spends a significant amount of time battling alcoholism and his own demons. The Harry Hole novels are multi-layered, violent and often feature women in peril.
Doctor Proctor
Reminiscent of Roald Dahl's books, Nesbo's four Doctor Proctor books for young readers focus on the antics of a crazy professor, his next-door neighbor Lisa, and and Lisa's peculiar friend Nilly.The books are concerned with self-identify, imagination, and courage
Stand-alones
Blood on Snow follows Olav Johansen, a fixer for Oslo crime boss Daniel Hoffman. Olav has just found the woman of his dreams; the only problem is that she's his boss' wife and that his boss has hired him to kill her.
Midnight Sun features Jon, or Ulf as he calls himself, a hapless criminal on the run from his boss, an Oslo drug lord known as the Fisherman. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 2/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
A fiendishly complex and terrifically entertaining plot.... Nesbo has a horrormeister's flair for transforming natural scenes into ominous situations.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
A superb thriller—smart, stylish, beautifully paced and meticulously plotted.
New York Newsday
This is crime writing of the highest order, in which the characters are as strong as the story, where an atmosphere of evil permeates, and the tension begins in the first chapter and never lets up.
London Times
Spine-chilling.... This most ambitious of Nesbo’s crime novels banishes any fears that the omniscient serial killer scenario has been exhausted.
Independent (UK)
Macabre and disturbing.... Deft plotting, strong characterization, adrenaline-fuelled action sequences and a whole raft of social issues raised along the way make this book a spectacularly good example of how a tried and tested (and often tired) formula can be made exhilarating and fresh.
Guardian (UK)
The writer most likely to take the ice-cold crown in the critically acclaimed—and now bestselling—category of Nordic noir.
Los Angeles Times
Nesbo's books have a serious, socially significant heft, as well as a confident (even cocky) narrative stride that is unmatched. These aren’t mere investigatory trifles to be enjoyed and forgotten; their unnerving horrors linger.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Nesbo’s pace is unerring, and the way he builds up suspense will incite Pavlovian page-turning.
Time Out New York
The Snowman is strung together with great care, playful in certain stretches, grisly in others, all of it highly readable.
Newsweek
Nesbo explores the darkest criminal minds with grim delight and puts his killers where you least expect to find them.... His novels are maddeningly addictive.
Vanity Fair
This is reading as you experienced it in childhood, without any gap between eye and mind, but with the added pleasures that adult plots and adult characters can bring.... Unputdownable. The Snowman is probably the most terrifying and certainly the most addictive book in the whole series.
Slate
In this chilling installment in Nesbo's Insp. Harry Hole crime series, a snowman left in the front yard of Birte Becker's Oslo house is the only clue to the woman's disappearance.... Nesbo breathes new life into the serial killer subgenre, giving it a Norwegian twist and never losing his laconic hero in the process.
Publishers Weekly
Nesbo is being hailed as the next Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell.... Apt comparisons, but they don't go far enough. This is simply the best detective novel this reviewer has read in years. —David Clendinning, West Virginia State Univ. Lib., Institute
Library Journal
[A] superb thriller.... Oslo detective Harry Hole returns, world-weary as ever, to puzzle out some very strange, and very discomfiting, events. [T]he story...unfolds at just the right pace. [A]smart, suspenseful cat-and-mouse game...and that's high praise indeed.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Snowman begins with a disturbing scene set in 1980, more than two decades before the events that follow. How does the opening establish the mood of the rest of the novel? What recurring themes and motifs does it introduce?
2. In what ways does the investigative team—Magnus Skarre, Katrine Bratt, and Bjorn Holm—represent the different viewpoints and skills involved in police work? What do the details about their demeanor and interests (for example, the description of Bratt and the profile of Holm) as well as their reactions to Harry’s presentation of the case convey about their personalities?
3. Rakel, Skarre, and Hagen offer succinct descriptions of Harry and what motivates him. Can Harry’s “anger and the desire for revenge” and his history of alcoholism be attributed to his experiences as a police detective or are they personal flaws?
4. Do you agree with Hagen’s comparison between Harry and military leaders and his assertion that "There’s a strong social urge in man to be needed.... You want this case to be special. You want it so much that you can see the blackest of the black"?
5. What does Harry’s relationship with Rakel and especially with Oleg reveal about him? What personal principles, emotions, and values underlie his attachment to them? What incidents in the investigation also capture this side of him?
6. To what extent do the police rely on standard assumptions about the disappearance or deaths of women in their approach to solving the crimes? Do the circumstances of the individual women—including their relationships with their husbands and children and their reputations within the community—influence the direction of the investigations?
7. The murdered women all had secrets. Discuss the reasons for or explanations of Sylvia Ottersen’s, Eli Kvale’s, and Birte Becker’s lies and deceptions. What does their behavior demonstrate about their sense of power—or lack of power—in their marriages? What moral questions arise in each case?
8. The journalist and TV pundit Arve Stop says, “as a pressman and a liberalist I have principles to consider. The issue here is whether I, as a declared anti-establishment watchdog, should unconditionally make my services available to the ruling power’s forces of law and order” and goes on to say, “I promise to assist in any way I am able.... If you in the force assist us." Does this passage accurately illustrate the relationship between the police and the media? Can you offer real-life examples of cases that indicate cooperation, either blatant or covert, between them? Are there situations in which such collaboration is helpful?
9. During the investigation several people come under suspicion. Are the suspicions in each case supported by credible arguments and evidence? Which suspects seemed to you the most likely to have committed the murders and why?
10. How does Nesbo set the stage for the encounter between Bratt and Avre Stop? What aspects of Bratt’s personality—and of Stop’s—enable her to manipulate the dangerous course of events?
11. What characteristics, good and bad, does Harry share with Rafto? In what ways are their careers similar? How do they compare to other fictional detectives in classic and contemporary literature?
12. What are the major turning points in the investigation? What do the twists in the plot demonstrate about the interplay of routine procedures and intuition in solving the murders? Discuss why Harry attributes his identification of the killer to “a fluke. An atypical fluke” and what this implies about the nature of criminal investigations.
13. What drives the killer’s decision to “leave clear clues, show them the connections, give them the bigger picture”? In what ways do the killer’s actions and motivation conform to your beliefs or knowledge about serial murderers, both fictional and real? Consider such factors as psychological problems caused by childhood traumas; the possession of above-average intelligence; the ability to charm others; and the sense of superiority often associated with such criminals.
14. Harry’s mentor Stale Aune, says, “The more aged I become, the more I tend to the view that evil is evil, mental illness or not. We’re all more or less disposed to evil...we’re all sick with personality disorders. And our actions define how we are." To what extent do the characters in the novel—victims, suspects, and members of the police, including Harry—struggle with “personality disorders”? In your opinion, does some degree of mental illness explain most, if not all, criminal behavior?
15. What techniques does Nesbo use to control the pace and tension of the narrative? Discuss the effect of the flashbacks that interrupt the on-going investigation; Harry’s private moments with Oleg and Rakel; the casual interactions among the police team; and the detailed, graphic accounts of crimes and the discovery of bodies.
16. Do the descriptions of life in Norway—from the weather to the rivalry between the cities Oslo and Bergen, to discussions of crime and other societal problems—enhance the novel? What function do the references to the American elections and culture serve?
17. Jo Nesbo is one of several Scandinavian crime fiction authors who are increasingly popular in this country. In what ways does The Snowman, well as works by Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, and Maj Sjowall, differ from American thrillers? What qualities, if any, distinguish Harry and his colleagues from the detectives depicted in American books, television shows, and movies?