The Snowman

Content Warning: This novel and review contain references to death, graphic violence, gender discrimination, sexual content, and emotional abuse.

Harry Hole has been charming readers with his integrity, dogged pursuit of the bad guy, and all-too-human failings since Nesbø’s debut novel and entry into the Nordic noir genre, The Bat, in 1997. The Snowman, the seventh Harry Hole book, is one of the most popular entries in the series, partly because the mystery Harry is solving becomes deeply personal, intersecting with his private life in uncomfortable and dangerous ways. While this ups the stakes, it also creates some hard-to-believe coincidences as Nesbø contorts the plot to make it all fit. However, the tension and breathless momentum of the novel are undeniable, and Harry is at his best here: A stubborn and methodical investigator as well as a compassionate and loyal man, Harry is ready to sacrifice whatever it takes to find the truth and protect his loved ones.

The novel begins in 2004. Harry Hole is a top inspector with the Oslo Crime Squad. He is renowned for solving the murders of Norwegian nationals overseas, but for the first time in the Harry Hole series, he is investigating crimes on Norwegian soil. For Harry, the day starts like any other, except for the fact that he has a new partner, Katrine. When they are called to a crime scene to investigate a missing woman named Birte, Harry notices a snowman in the yard. An anonymous letter that Harry receives deepens the mystery by asking, “Who made the snowman?” (85). Birte’s son, Jonas, tells them that he didn’t build the snowman, and his insistence sparks a memory of a letter Harry received after a television appearance; it also referenced “the snowman,” and Harry begins to suspect the crime is much larger than one woman’s disappearance.  

After another woman goes missing, Harry and his team do some research and realize that over the past 10 years, the number of people—specifically women—going missing in Norway each year has slowly grown. Harry believes that they have a serial killer on their hands, and although his boss is skeptical, he agrees to give Harry some time to investigate. Harry assembles his team and shows them the letter, and they make a plan to investigate similar crimes across Norway.

The plot takes a further turn with the reveal that the two missing women are connected through their doctor. The team also discovers that the killer’s pattern goes back much further—to 1992 and a case that Katrine remembers from her time with the Bergen police. When she and Harry discover the police officer in charge of that investigation dead in a freezer—with a carrot in place of his nose and a row of black nails approximating a smile—it confirms that the case goes deeper than they’d imagined.

Characteristically for Harry, his work takes all of his time and attention, while his personal life is a bit of a mess. Harry’s ex-girlfriend, Rakel, is going to marry a man named Mathias, and although Harry wants her to be happy, he deeply regrets that their relationship ended because of his work. He tries to keep up his relationship with Rakel’s son, Oleg, but increasingly feels displaced by Mathias, a doctor who seems to be everything that Rakel wants and everything that Harry is not.

The novel moves effortlessly between Harry’s work and personal lives, dipping into the perspectives of Katrine and other characters connected to him. The inclusion of Rakel’s point of view is a particularly welcome departure from tradition in a genre (crime/thriller broadly) that often treats women as little more than plot devices—and never more so than when they have a romantic connection to the (male) protagonist. Rakel, however, emerges as a nuanced and at times flawed figure in her own right (like Harry, she is ambivalent about their breakup and cheats on her fiancé with him), which makes her eventual role as a damsel in distress no less disappointing but somewhat easier to stomach. Overall, the result of the novel’s structure is a web of interconnected characters who become well-rounded and complex, their motivations and decisions driving the action of the novel. With this strategy, Nesbø pushes the narrative past the conventions of the crime thriller genre to offer the reader a character-driven story, facilitating an emotional connection to the characters that ups the stakes and tension of the mystery.

When another woman goes missing, the novel takes a turn into Nordic noir’s characteristic grittiness and graphic imagery. The pursuit, capture, and murder of the killer’s next victim is examined in detail, although the novel stops right before the decapitation itself. Readers who aren’t up for graphic violence might find it a bit much, but fans of the genre and of Harry will understand it as part and parcel of both the genre and the series.

Throughout The Snowman, the novel is preoccupied with the larger social and political context of the crimes. Nordic noir often places some emphasis on the corruption of government institutions like the police, and The Snowman is no different. As the case gains media traction, Harry’s boss gives him more resources despite doubting the case’s validity earlier, a plainly political move. In addition, the novel focuses on the constrictions and casual abuse present in the victims’ marriages, highlighting women’s position in patriarchal culture and society. This social commentary is a recurring feature of the Harry Hole books, and it works because Harry is both jaded and compassionate—although he has seen it all and is surprised by none of it, he still feels it all deeply.