Another gritty, twisty and nasty entry in the Harry Hole series. It could be pure recency bias, but I thought it was one of Nesbo’s best.
In his seventh outing, our favourite loose cannon detective investigates a string of disappearances around Oslo. A pattern soon emerges: the missing persons are mothers, and a snowman always appears near the scene, sometimes innocuously, sometimes in a grisly and macabre fashion. When one of the women is found brutally murdered, Harry has a grim suspicion that he’s chasing Norway’s first known serial killer. Worse still, this killer seems to have a personal vendetta against Hole, and a chilling meticulous plan that will not be deviated from.
A complex investigation ensues, with suspects and red herrings galore, and themes of identity, heredity and infidelity slowly emerging over time. Norwegian winter and snow are important elements in this one, which adds even more to the distinctive Scandinavian flavour I’ve always enjoyed about Nesbo’s writing (even all those Norwegian names I wouldn’t know how to pronounce thrill me). I can’t say I enjoy his depictions of human evil at its darkest and most horrific, exactly, but it is a memorable feature of his books. There are a few scenes and descriptions here that truly made my skin crawl. And who could have imagined that an innocent snowman from my own childhood could be made so sinister?
Harry’s small trusted team has a newcomer recently transferred from Bergen, a young woman named Katrine Bratt. She’s sharp as a tack, and there’s a strange, simmering tension between her and Harry that has a whiff of sexual attraction, but mostly he senses a kindred troubled soul in Katrine. Though the action is mostly confined to Oslo, I enjoyed the brief visits to Bergen, where the killer’s early history takes place. I was lucky enough to visit Bergen (where I had my two sole sunny, rain-free days out of my entire Norway trip), and it’s always fun to read about the social layers and hidden undercurrents of a city that you experienced as a tourist, seeing only the best it had to offer.
I never had trouble reading Harry Hole series out of order, as every novel tends to work as a standalone, but Harry’s complicated and tortured love life does give me whiplash from book to book. This time around, Harry is separated from Rakel, his One True Love, their romantic relationship seemingly over. In fact Rakel has a new respectable boyfriend who can offer her everything Harry isn’t capable of, but surprise surprise, she’s not quite over her ex. To be honest, Rakel always felt to me like a wish fulfillment fantasy rather than a fully realised character, but there’s no denying her importance to Harry.
For all the Norwegian grimness and gloom, and for all Harry’s battles with his own demons, I do appreciate Nesbo’s sense of humour and fun. Harry might be a functioning alcoholic teetering on the edge, but he is as self-deprecating as he is brilliant, and his sincere love of music is very endearing. I felt quite nostalgic over the mentions of early 2000s bands like Slipknot and Franz Ferdinand.
My only gripe with the novel is that I figured out the identity of the killer very early on, and then spent the rest of the book hoping that it wouldn’t be as obvious as that. I wish I could say it was about my supreme detective skills and attention to clues, but I simply had a hunch based on what would make the most dramatic and emotional sense, and was a tad let down when the reveal unfolded just as I predicted. Still, the novel’s elaborate finale was just as gripping and shocking as you’d have hoped, and made my heart race despite knowing fully well that the characters in danger were going to survive and appear in many more Harry Hole books.
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