Wednesday 15 June 2011

Jo Nesbo: The Snowman Reviewed

Nesbo's best work yet; you can see why his US publisher went big with this book, it's a cracking tale of serial killing and snowmen. Policeman Harry Hole is dragged around Norway as the body count mounts - someone with a talented scalpel is killing women and taunting the police by building snowmen at the scenes of the crimes.

Detective Harry is awash in a sea of TV stars, doctors, good cops and bad cops, office politics and Nesbo's usual red herrings. Jo Nesbo hasn't always been as subtle in the use of such devices as I'd have liked; here he's mastered the art to provide a series of plausible but blind alleys and crescendos of action.

Tuesday 7 June 2011

Jo Nesbo: The Redbreast Reviewed

Nesbo's detective Harry Hole appears in a tale of decades old revenge and murder, interspersed with a look at Norway's WWII fascists and their present day counterparts.

The novel starts unpromisingly for Hole: alcoholic tremors in a police car as he watches his section of the visiting US President's route, an unknown intruder in a building, a desperate footrace hoping for a stay, a shot ...