This was my first Harry Hole mystery thriller but hopefully not my last! Over the years, women have gone missing on the day of a first snowfall. Harry Hole, the only Oslo police investigator with experience catching serial killers in Norway, is alerted to this pattern by a mysterious letter about the Snowman. Thus begins a superb thriller by Norwegian Jo Nesbø; this story has many twists where it seems the case is solved, but that can't be true because there are many pages to go. I appreciated the flashbacks and fragments from perspectives other than Harry's which at first don't fit well, but make sense later. Harry is an interestingly flawed, alcoholic character who uses both intuition and solid reasoning to solve this case. Be warned that there are non-prudish sex scenes and a gruesome ending. Although I was able for once to guess the villain, I thoroughly enjoyed this Scandinavian thriller.

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I'm going against the grain here and am saying that I couldn't even finish this book. The problem for me stems from the fact that most all of the names/places are Norewgian, with long names + accents that I can't pronounce. Consequently, I never could get immersed into the story because the character development wasn't clicking with me. I found my attempts to pronounce the names a completely distraction from the story. A couple of characters were easy to get to know because I could 'hear' their names in my head(detectives Harry Hole and Karine Bratt, for example). Apparently I need to be able to do this in order to enjoy a story.

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I'm reading this series out of order, based on what I can get my hands on at the library. Harry Hole is a terrific character, and I enjoy listening to the story rather than reading the rather complicated foreign names. I enjoyed this one,but not as much as The Leopard. I'm off to start The Redeemer tonight. Highly recommend.

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Jo Nesbo lives up to the hype. His books are highly original and extremely suspenseful. Harry Hole is a great flawed hero in the tradition of both the hardboiled American detective and the Swedish tormented souls who devote their lives to trying to find order in a world of chaos. Harry is wounded and vulnerable, but still brilliant at his job. The Snowman makes a great nemesis and there are multitudes of twists to keep the reader engaged.

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You will never look at a snowman the same way again. :o

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The night the first snow falls a young boy wakes to find his mother gone. He walks through the silent house, but finds only wet footprints on the stairs. In the garden looms a solitary figure: a snowman bathed in cold moonlight, its black eyes glaring up at the bedroom windows. Round its neck is his mother's pink scarf. Inspector Harry Hole is convinced there is a link between the disappearance and a menacing letter he received some months earlier. When a second woman disappears Harry's suspicions are confirmed: he is a pawn in a deadly game. For the first time in his career Harry finds himself confronted with a serial killer operating on his turf, a killer who will drive him to the brink of insanity.

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2.5 stars rounded up. A good concept, but I think the translation made the story clunky.

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