The Snowman

The Snowman

By Jo Nesbo

I've said it once and I'll say it again: Scandinavians are morbid. They tend to be tall, blond-haired and blue eyed (as if that wasn't creepy enough). They have a propensity for burning churches. Their ancient mythology is brutal, savage and tragic and has spawned an entirely unlistenable sub-genre of metal music only appreciated in Scandinavia... and Brazil). They are just neat enough and tidy enough and socialist enough to make you assume they were all born Virgo and they seem to prefer their crime novels on the darker side of macabre.

(Aside: As if to accentuate the point, the Heavy Metal band, Morbid, was Swedish)

Whether it's the cyber-punk horrors of Steig Larsson's Millennium Series or the more sedate brutality of Henning Mankell's Wallander Series, the people of Norway and Sweden seem thrive on extreme violence and murder. When you add Jo Nesbo and his series of novels featuring Harry Hole into the mix, one has to wonder how three of the best (if not most morbid) writers of the last quarter century have all come from the Northern Europe. Must have something to do with lack of sunlight and fjords.

I mentioned three novelists, but as of the writing of this blog post, we seem to be down to just one. With the tragically premature death of Steig Larsson and the last of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels drifting ever so slowly out of the zeitgeist, it is Jo Nesbo that has remained to carry the torch of the Scandinavian crime fiction genre (that absurd title always reminds me of metal heads who go on and on about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal from the late 1970s). And much like Larsson with Lisbeth Salander and Mankell with Wallander, Nesbo has come equipped with a character every bit as intense and intoxicating as his predecessors: Harry Hole.

Detective Harry Hole is what would be produced if John McClane, Bruce Willis's legendary character from the Die Hard franchise somehow begat a child with Jimmy McNulty from The Wire. Brash, bold and dangerous but also self-destructive, and at times hopelessly lost and completely uncertain about his job, Harry Hole is a man with more personal demons than the people he arrests. He makes giant, terrible mistakes and, although not lacking in critical and analytical thinking, he makes wild, sweeping mistakes. Harry Hole is the Hamlet of Scandinavian crime fiction (though without the tragic endings). He is about the most humanized police officer you will ever read in a novel not written by Richard Price. While Lisbeth Salander is deftly hacking into your computer with nary a typo in her code, Harry Hole is mortally wounding the wrong person while trying to fight the urge to chuck a bottle of Jack Daniel's. How can you not root for this guy?

In fact, I spent a lot of time wondering whether Hole was a metaphor for how Nesbo views Norwegians on the world scene. At one point in the novel one of the characters, Arve Stop a media personality, laments that Norway loves the loser. Losers provide stories with grit and tragedy and pain. Winners are uninteresting by nature. One wonders whether Harry Hole is the embodiment of this sentiment. If so, Norwegians have a lot in common with Canadians. It comes with the territory of sidling up next to an economic  and military powerhouse. But I digress.

The Snowman recounts the events of Norway's first really artistic serial killer and it's up to Hole, Oslo's best if not brightest, to lead the investigation. The killer, dubbed the "The Snowman" due to his penchant for building snowmen at the scene of each of his crimes, has somehow flown under the radar of the police for a couple of years. When a new detective, Katrine Blatt, joins the Oslo police force she and Hole begin to make the connections between the victims of several missing persons reports. A series of increasingly grisly murder scenes seem to validate the assertion that they are dealing with something more than the average Norwegian gangland killings and Scandinavian church burners. As the crimes begin to spiral ever closer to Harry Hole, it becomes evident that the killer is engaging in a battle of wits with the policeman himself. Something rotten north of Denmark.

The story is incredibly complex with all sorts of the twists and turns one expects from good crime writing but without the implausible elements that leave many readers rolling their eyes. Often a writer tries to make that one last twist to shake off those final readers who may have actually solved the mystery before the protagonist leaving a bitter taste of the ludicrous in the reader's mouth. Nesbo doesn't go in for such shenanigans. While Nesbo certainly serves enough twists and red herrings to open a seafood bar and grill, they were done with the panache of a writer working at the top of his game. It took the entire first half of the novel for me to realize that trying to stay ahead of the investigation was futile because Nesbo was manipulating the reader with the deft and clarity of vision. Nesbo knew exactly where both the story and the reader were going.

I admit, I had the culprit pegged somewhere toward the end of the second third of the novel but it didn't seem to matter. In fact, I'm actually pretty confident that Nesbo wanted me to guess the killer by then. Like the characters in his book, Nesbo was playing me right into his hands. Knowing the killer hardly dissuaded from the enjoyment of the novel. I simply needed to understand how it all went down. I continued on, often like a reader possessed. The Snowman is so psychologically intense that over the course of the week I spent reading it, my wife repeatedly asked whether something was bothering me. I would always answer with: "Yes... The Snowman is bothering me."

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the superb translation done by Don Bartlett from the original Norwegian. Obviously, I didn't read this in its original language (my Norwegian is a little rusty after 37 years of having never once studied it) but Bartlett conveyed what I can only assume was the intensity and ferocity of the narrative without much compromise. What little may have been lost in translation was lost to me and if the story suffered as a result I was none the wiser.

If you are lamenting the end of the Wallander series or still in mourning over the untimely death of Steig Larsson and you haven't yet read or even heard of Jo Nesbo I strongly urge you to get out there and pick up a copy of The Snowman (or any of the other novels featuring Harry Hole). If you are already a

Faceless Killers

Faceless Killers

By Hennig Mankell

I have no idea where this book came from. It was on my shelf and looked short enough and interesting enough to wash my head clear of all the non-fiction I have been reading over the past couple of weeks. There's nothing like settling into a novel after a non-fiction binge. It's like coming home.

When I started the book I had absolutely no idea that it was yet another Swedish crime novel (these things are like bed bugs lately... just what you think you've seen the last one, out pops another from the seams of your coverlet). All I read on the back of the book were the words: "It was a senselessly violent crime," and I said: "SOLD!" I'm not a discerning customer. Anyway, I should have guessed it was Swedish.

As it turns out, Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell pre-dates the current fetish (um.. that's two blog posts in a row that I've used that term) with Scandinavian crime drama, but it does not pre-date the conventions. It is also the first in a series (dammit!). I don't know enough about Scandinavian crime dramas but based on the fact that this novel was an international best seller in 1991 and that it seems to have all the requisite insanity of The Millennium Trilogy (and others), I'm curious as to whether or not this is the grandfather of a genre (much like The New York Dolls were the grandfather of punk rock). Of course, it is set in a quiet provincial town. There is the unnecessarily gruesome murder, the overworked and under-appreciated cops, the over-arching distrust of foreigners, the ubiquitous dislike for women and the ever-impending snowstorms. It's all there. In 1991. I'm beginning to think that, much like Canadian fiction, there should be a checklist that should be created to decide exactly how Swedish a particular book is.

Faceless Killers starts with the (what else?) gruesome murder of an elderly couple on a farm outside a quiet, provincial town. Naturally, the wife suffers a fair amount more than her husband. The rest of the novel follows Kurt Wallander, an over-worked and under-appreciated cop leads the investigation of the killings. The first two thirds of the novel follow Wallander's life in a minute by minute account of the first two weeks of the investigation when it becomes apparent that the killers just might be refugees from Eastern Europe (which naturally sparks all sorts of reactionary hate crimes... this is Sweden after all, the land of Church burnings and Neo-Nazis). He attempts to move the investigation along while his personal life seems to be unravelling all around him. Only his calm and cool Ystad demeanor and the lack of snow seems to carry him through what to virtually everyone else living on the Skane would be a stress level of coronary proportions. Given that he is recently divorced (what cop isn't?) and eating nothing but hamburgers and pizza, I'm surprised that he lives through this episode, but what do I know about the Swedish constitution?

The last third of the novel seems to send the story into overdrive. Months pass in the span of a few pages as the case seems to go as cold as March in Hällesjö, before Wallander resolves the mystery in the final few pages. Given the detailed narrative of the first third, I found this shift in the momentum jarring. I had become accustom the minute by minute narrative style. When it started to spin out of control, Mankell lost me a bit. I started to care a lot less about the resolution due to the pace transition. It felt a little like Mankell was trying to wrap up his novel in time to catch the last train to Sävsjö or something. It all just seemed to lose traction.

But I could live with that. It was a minor nuisance in an otherwise enjoyable crime novel. What really irked me was the translation. I kept checking back to see whether Ernest Hemingway had returned from the grave to abbreviate an entirely new generation. Turns out it's a guy named Steven T. Murray. I'm assuming he really likes Hemingway, or Dick and Jane novels, either/or. It got to a point where I began talking to my wife in short, rapid-fire sentences over lunch. She asked whether or not I had suffered a stroke.

This is a typical (though written by me, not Henning Mankell) paragraph from the book:

Wallander wondered whether he should call Kalle in Väderstad. He felt sick. Ryberg still hadn't arrived. The winter wind blew outside his window. He remembered he hadn't eaten since yesterday. He walked out of the station. He entered the restaurant across the street. He ordered a pizza. He would call Kalle as soon as he got back to the office. The pizza had pineapple. It was 11:46pm.

See what I mean? It's as unnerving as a staring contest.

The other uncomfortable thing about Faceless Killers was its focus on Sweden's (apparent) liberal policy toward immigrants and refugees. While I wouldn't class this novel as being racist or anti-immigration, it did seem to imply a lot of negativity toward non-Swedish residents. While it could be that Mankell's intention was to raise the issue, I'm not sure he was overly clear about it. I got the impression that most of the characters in the book would have been perfectly happy with mass expulsion, but they were all too Nordically polite to say so. I might be wrong, but that was the impression this book left me.

But I'm not going to slag on Faceless Killers too much. As a whole it had me from page one through the pace change and while I lost some of the interest Mankell generated in his build-up I didn't lose so much as to throw the book down in disgust or anything. It's not the world's greatest crime novel  but it certainly isn't the worst book on the market and who am I to get all huffy about Swedish immigration policy? Besides, I could think of worse things to read if you happen to be caught on the overnight train from Stockholm to Rättviks.

If you dig sado-masochistic novels from Scandinavia, check it out. If you were ambivalent about the Millennium Trilogy, give this one a pass.

Pillars of the Earth

Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett

Transitioning from one book to another is never an easy exercise. Some people let a few days go by between books. Let it stew. Ruminate on it a little. I don't. I insist on starting a new book on the same day I finish my previous book (and I never, ever read two books at the same time). Some people think that's crazy. Sometimes I agree, but it's what I've done for so long, there's no real way for me to break the habit.

Transitions can often be quite smooth, especially if the previous book was simply terrible. Moving from The Shack by William P. Young to Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen, for example, was a slice of heaven. I'm was so happy to be back in a good book that I began devouring it. As well, it could be a book that I have been anticipating for quite some time (like Keith Richard's Life) and I'm just in a hurry to get things started. These transtitions are easy.

But sometimes transtitions are difficult, especially after having read an extremely good book. Leaving behind a great read such as Replay by Ken Grimwood and starting up something entirely unknown is heart-wrenching. You're leaving behind characters you have come to love and understand. Like any break-up, you're not entirely sure you can go on without them right away. Perhaps you need a little time on your own to rest, meditate and catch up on some television. You just couldn't possibly care about any other characters right now. I have to ease into books slowly when this occurs.

This happened to me last year while making my way through The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. I was determined not to read all three in succession, so I broke the series up with two books in between. When I finished the first book, it took all my energy to stick to my austere program. As luck would have it, I picked up Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell and enjoyed it immensely ( I love me some medieval history). It was the proverbial slice of cheddar between sips of red at a wine tasting. With my pallette cleansed, I dove into The Girl Who Played With Fire. No problem.

It was between The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest that I made a critical error. Cheekily, I picked up G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. I should have taken this selection far more seriously. Chesterton is torturous reading when you know you have the finale of something you care about sitting on the shelf 10 feet away. I crept through the book. The only thing pushing me on was the promise of a better book at the end. Not the best attitude to have while reading. I have promised myself to give G.K. Chesterton another chance.

This is not exactly what happened with Pillars of the Earth. I had just come out of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and I had had just about enough of that one, so I was ready for something new. But there is a little of the 10 year-old reader in me and when I saw the 983 page opus sitting on the shelf, I got intimidated. That's a lot of pages to slog through if I don't like it. And I haven't given up on a book in four years. My first few days in Pillars of the Earth were very tentative. I wasn't really ready to settle into such a large book and I wasn't giving it much of a chance. I usually get a kick out of watching my bookmark move its way through a novel, but with Ken Follett it doesn't ever seem to move! I waited and waited for Follett to make me care.

I had this same problem with Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, but for slightly different reasons. I was given Cloud Atlas by two people within a month and told to drop all other books and read it immediately, which I did. Two people who seprated by the Pacific who don't know each other insisting I read something is a fairly ringing endorsement. The first two chapters (before I realized what Mitchell was doing and subsequently fell head over heels in love with the book) made me feel like I was being cheated. I read the bare minimum (25 pages a day) for days and grumbled how both a friend and a relative could be so terribly wrong about a book. I was never going to finish this brick.

But there comes a point in these sorts of books when it begins to click. The characters seep into your subconcious and you need to get back in there, see how things progress. In Cloud Atlas, it was the third chapter. In Pillars of the Earth it was the burning of the church. From that point on, you know things are going to be ok. It doesn't matter if the book is 183 pages or 1183 pages, you're hooked. The bookmark makes steady progress and by the time you finish, you agonize about your next book.

Can it possibly compare to this one?