The Snowman

Excellent story telling. Great narration. I love Michael Connelly's books, and his reccomendation of this author contributed to my decision to buy The Snowman. The story is complicated - full of twists and unexpected turns. Characters have a lot of depth. I'll listen to more Jo Nesbo.

REALLY liked this book! I've been looking for a good mystery and have struck out with several of my recent purchases. Not so with The Snowman. Good narration, interesting characters, complicated and well developed plot. My first Nesbo book, but won't be my last.

The first 15 minutes or so of this audiobook seemed so slow and awkward that I almost put it aside without finishing it; what a huge mistake that would have been! The Snowman is one of the best mystery/thrillers published in a long time. Nesbo's writing is succinct, yet, at the same time, very expressive. The characters are well-defined and clearly fit into the theme of the story. The narrator, who I had initially thought was boring, makes the characters come alive; his diction is superb, and he's definitely one of the best in the business. Do listen to The Snowman; you'll be glad you did!

I almost quit Nesbo after I listened to The Devil's Star and The Redbreast. But in The Snowman, Nesbo rolled up the characters and placed the delicately intriguing plot lines one on top of the other. Nesbo then chose pebbles of shocking crime scenes and a serial killer with patience and intelligence to form a mouth and eyes. Then comes the carrot...

The suspense built steadily, even through the times where the characters thought the killer was identified. I was never able to relax, nor did I want to.

The driven and tormented Katrina Brat.

The stalking and murder of the woman who cut off the chicken heads. I cannot remember her name. The description of the forest and the stream, the taste of the cold water, made me turn up the heater. I made the last, desperate throw of the ax with her.

The characters are broken and haunted. Even the children are wounded. The hero's struggle through their wounds, the villains wear their wounds like a crown.

My guess is that the peoples of scandinavian countries either have a lot of time on their hands or are just essentially deep thinkers. This book is a fine example. Well written, and well read, I thought I had it scoped out but it surely took twists and turns I never anticipated. I found it riveting and often found myself at a destination, killing time to find a good place to stop listening.
Even though murder mysteries are not my primary favorite genre, I will be looking for Jo Nesbo again and will pickup whatever he writes.
In short: excellent in every way.

This is a first rate thriller. The characters are all well defined and the antagonist suitably evil. I know there will be comparisons to the Millenium series, which is a bit unfortunate because the only comparisons are the geography and genre. Just plain excellent. I had to ding it a "star" only because of the narration. The narrator has a great voice but sometimes speaks far too fast and I miss several words and his patrician accent is difficult for a born and raised Californian.

This was a great story, spooky, the kind that gives you chills when listening at night all alone. I'd never heard of Jo Nesbo and was surprised that Jo is a guy, a Norwegian. It was a riveting thriller, a page turner, the kind you can't put down. I'll look forward to my next Nesbo!

What a story and wowie zowie ending! This one requires patience and discipline, but so worth it. As with Larsen's books the names are gonna throw you. I advised a friend just starting it to jot down the names phonetically and who they are as he goes along - a little hard to do when you're jogging! Our American ears just can't compute names that are So foreign that we can't visualize. A thought: Audible could include a cast of characters with the download? Anyway, a fabulous listen.

Several nice twists in the plot, although some of them almost predictable. Narratotion is good, but there are some parts of the recording that are very low (meaning the pitch), so when I listened to it in the car, it was difficult to understand.

Maybe it was a case of unfortunate timing: reading Norwegian author Nesbo while Swedish author Stieg Larsson's tattoed heroine still lingered with me; or writing a review after reading so many that compared this book with Larrsen's quintessential Millennium trilogy. Either way, Snowman fell a little short all on its own.

Nesbo is racking up the literary plaudits, he has a huge following of enthusiastic fans (which I don't want to send into attack mode) but, geographic location and subject matter does not make him on par with Larssen. Larssen was an intelligent fresh writer--Nesbo more a prolific rock star writer. And while I don't want to write a review based solely on the premise of comparison, the fact is "that girl" does still linger with me 4 yrs. later; the characters from Snowman have already--well--melted away, lost in that puddle of idiosyncratic sleuths from thriller crime novels long forgotten. So away from comparisons....

While sufficiently packed with action, sex, and gore (trilogy Nesbo style) and the prerequisite closeted-skeleton-laden characters, Snowman lacked sophistication, polish, and plausibility, to the point of tipping to contrived and just nonsensical, requiring too much "suspended belief" to be a tight top-notch thriller. Nesbo's strength with Snowman is constructing the eerily quiet icy setting--and villianizing the former "happy jolly soul" which you will never want staring at you from your own front yard again.

As far as recommending, I'd have to say read this one at your own discretion. For future reads, I'm not saying no to Jo; I'll give him another go...I'll let you know.