This article is more than 1 year old

Memory Man, The Lady from Zagreb and Blood on Snow

A trio of crime thrillers to chill you on the beach

Blood on Snow

Regular Page File readers will be aware of my aversion to corpse fiction. Call it crime, thrills or what you will – one dead body is pretty much the same as the next, and I’ve met too many crims to harbour any voyeuristic tendencies.

Even so, I do have a soft spot for the Tartan Noir genre. I once asked a Scottish crime writer why they were so good; she put it down to the shit weather and their miserable disposition.

I have heard of the Scandi noir fashion but don’t do telly, so reasoned that with their even worse climate, Scandinavian crime writers could be even better than the Scots.

Jo Nesbo is a Norwegian writer with ten previous crime books under his belt. Blood On Snow is the story of Olav, a dyslexic hitman who wipes out transgressors for a smack dealer. He is an executioner with a heart, we hear, and rescues disabled deaf and dumb maidens from prostitution, only to weirdly stalk them.

One day Olav’s boss gives him a contract to wipe out Mrs Smack Dealer, as she’s been playing the away fixture. Our man stakes out the marital home and observes her illicit squeeze visiting, slapping her around and giving her one on a chaise longue. Olav follows him, rubs wipes him out and phones the boss – only to find out he’s killed the boss’s son.

Jo Nesbo, Blood on Snow book cover

Our protagonist makes away with Mrs Smack Dealer and they appear to instantly fall in love. Realising that both their lives are in danger, Olav contacts Mr Smack Dealer’s main competitor for some assistance in wiping out his rival. In the manner of Toshirô Mifune in Yojimbo (later covered by Clint in For a Fistful of Dollars) he orders three coffins.

We are then treated to a flashback to Olav’s tormented childhood: mummy was a piss artist and daddy was an abusive sex offender, until Olav converted him into a shish kebab using a ski stick. His last words: “That’s my boy.”

We get the usual twists, double crosses, a shootout and a semi-surprise ending. Maybe you could put some of this novel’s defects down to clumsy translation, but that cannot excuse the blatant lack of original ideas or disguise the wafer thin characters that even the author doesn’t seem to care too much about, so why should we?

I guess with the exception of Anders Brevik, the murder rate in Norway is so low, cheap voyeurism is the only alternative. Compared to the best Scottish crime fiction this is dire, so bang goes my theory: crime fiction's thrills peak around the latitude of Glasgow and Edinburgh, I definitely won’t be investigating the merits of Inuit crime fiction any time soon.

We are constantly reminded of the high living and educational standards of Scandinavia but this is writing of a teenage standard with a join-the-dots plot. The problem is that Jo Nesbo is 55. I believe he has an alternative career as an economist; that is surely no excuse to write like one.

Currently suffering sunburn on the Algarve, I thought Blood on Snow might at least cool me down, but alas, it didn't engage me enough to really work as holiday pulp. ®

Jo Nesbo, Blood on Snow book coverAuthor Jo Nesbo
Title Blood on Snow
Publisher Harvill Secker
Price £12.99 (Hardback), £8.98 (eBook)
More info Publication web site

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like