The Snowman by Jo NesbøMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I came to this book after reading The Leopard by the same author, which I found disappointing. My wife bought it, and I wasn't particularly keen to read it, as I thought it might be similarly disappointing, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was vintage Jo Nesbø, except perhaps for the last couple of chapters.
Oslo detective Harry Hole is asked to investigate the case of a missing woman with his new partner Katrine Bratt, who urges him to check older unsolved cases in Bergen that seem to have some similarities. When a second missing woman is found murdered, it seems that a serial killer may be at work.
Towards the end, however, the story shows the same descent into the improbable that characterises The Leopard throughout, and the figure of the boozy Scandiwegian detective seems well on its way to becoming a literary cliche. Perhaps this is because Nesbø's publishers have taken to hyping him as "the next Stieg Larsson", which is a pity, because Nesbø writes better as Nesbø than as a faux Stieg Larsson.
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