Book Summary and Reviews of The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

The Snowman

A Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • May 2011, 400 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Internationally acclaimed crime writer Jo Nesbø's antihero police investigator, Harry Hole, is back: in a bone-chilling thriller that will take Hole to the brink of insanity.

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother's pink scarf.

Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he's received and the disappearance of Jonas's mother - and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised - and constantly revised - by the killer.

Fiercely suspenseful, its characters brilliantly realized, its atmosphere permeated with evil, The Snowman is the electrifying work of one of the best crime writers of our time.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Nesbø breathes new life into the serial killer subgenre, giving it a Norwegian twist and never losing his laconic hero in the process." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Nesbø is being hailed as the next Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell.... Apt comparisons, but they don't go far enough. This is simply the best detective novel this reviewer has read in years." - Library Journal

"Jo Nesbø is my new favorite thriller writer and Harry Hole my new hero." - Michael Connelly, bestselling author

"Starred Review. The smart, suspenseful cat-and-mouse game will remind some readers of Erik Skjoldbjærg's 1997 film Insomnia - and that’s high praise indeed." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about The Snowman was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Jo Nesbo Author Biography

Jo Nesbo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books have sold sixty million copies worldwide and have been translated into fifty languages. In addition to the Harry Hole series, his novels include The Night House, Headhunters, The Son, Blood on Snow, Midnight Sun, Macbeth, and The Kingdom. He is a recipient of the Raymond Chandler Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Oslo.

Link to Jo Nesbo's Website

Name Pronunciation
Jo Nesbo: According to the author's website, Jo is pronounced like 'you', and Jo says the 'o' in Nesbo is similar to the vowel in Inspector Clouseau's pronunciation of the word 'bomb'

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