Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson

Snowblind
by Ragnar Jonasson [Jonasson] 

This is a new book in the Nordic noir section and takes place on the northernmost tip of Iceland. It was fun to watch through the window as snow fell while I read this, because I could hear the wind blowing and feel the cold, ice, and snow. I had goosebumps when reading about people swimming in a pool during a blizzard. A just-graduated police officer has moved to the northern, snowy, isolated and usually calm town. While the community is planning a new play to open around Christmas, the new police officer suspects foul play when a famous author is found dead at the bottom of the playhouse stairs. When a woman is found in the snow, the town is enveloped in fear. I’m curious to see in time if this might be the beginning of a new mystery series.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson]

[ official Dark Iceland series web page on the official Ragnar Jonasson web site ]

Recommended by Jodi R.
Gere Branch Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

The Redeemer by Jo Nesbø

The Redeemer
by Jo Nesbø

The libraries’ Just Desserts mystery fiction discussion group finally got around to reading and discussing a Jo Nesbø novel for our April 2016 meeting. We ended up using this, the sixth volume in Nesbø’s Harry Hole series, featuring a brilliant Oslo murder investigator who’s also a struggling alcoholic, and who regularly faces career challenges and difficulties with his personal life. This particular volume in the series features an assassin who has come to Oslo to kill someone, but the wrong man is killed, and when a quirk of the weather traps the killer in Norway instead of allowing them to escape, they realized their mistake and stick around to fix the problem.

The characters are all well-drawn, particularly Harry himself, and the ruthless, determined killer. I didn’t really get a specific feel for Oslo and the other settings, other than as cold, drab, emotionally-draining locales. The plot kept pulling me along, as well as the curiosity to find out how Harry would deal with the larger issues associated with the case — he turns out to be the kind of honorable detective who doesn’t necessarily follow all of the rules — occasionally doing the “wrong thing” for the “right reason”. I ended up really liking Harry, even if the plot of the novel didn’t truly hold my interest.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the rest of the Harry Hole series, by Jo Nesbø]

[ official The Redeemer page on the official English-language Jo Nesbø web site ]

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?  
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

New Booklist on BookGuide - Nordic Noir

Call it "the genre literary movement 'the Girl' gave birth to". Though that's a bit misleading. Writers from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland have been plumbing the psychological depths of killers and cops for quite some time -- notably the writing team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, who combined for ten books featuring detective Martin Beck from 1965 to 1975. However, the category of crime writing now known as Nordic Noir didn't gain a huge following outside of its European origins until Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

achieved explosive international fame in 2008, with over 27 million copies sold in 40 different countries.

The elements that contribute to make Nordic Noir a distinctive subgenre of mystery/thriller are as follows: streamlined language, downtrodden, world-weary, troubled and often anti-social heroes, and settings of cool, dark climates with strong anti-political, anti-government social attitudes. Most of these elements are common to the traditional American "noir" novels -- think Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Patricia Highsmith, and Elmore Leonard. However, the one thing that differs in Nordic Noir from traditional American Noir is the somewhat scathing look at the contemporary Scandinavian socio-political world. For an intensely liberal, admired culture that enjoys a strong welfare state, there's a great deal of dissatisfaction and frustration with government, big business and traditional organizations of power and influence, including law enforcement! In addition to Stieg Larsson (who died in 2004) and Henning Mankell (whose deeply-troubled protagonist Kurt Wallander has been successfully interpreted on television by Kenneth Brannagh), some of the key authors in this increasingly popular new literary category are: Arne Dahl, Ake Edwardson, Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason, Lars Kepler, Camilla Lackberg, Jo Nesbo, Hakan Nesser and Helene Tursten, though these just scratch the surface.

Click here to see the full booklist, featuring over 25 authors in this popular mystery/thriller subgenre!