I have to say, I had never heard of this guy, even though the sticker on the front of the book says he is a Nobel laureate.

"Snow" tells the story of a Turkish poet, who uses his initials instead of his name and is known only as Ka, visiting a remote city in the mountains in the North Eastern part of the country (I did look it up in the Times Atlas of the World). Ka has been away for some years... living in Frankfurt as a political exile, but now returns to his home country, and takes a long journey by bus to investigate a spate of suicides among young girls.

At the time, the state has forbidden the girls to cover their heads in school, and those who still insist on wearing a veil are expelled. Suicide seems to be their only available protest, even though Islam teaches that suicide is a sin.

When Ka finally arrives at the city of Kars, it is snowing heavily, and of course the snow blankets the landscape, and muffles all sound. Humans are conditioned to expect sounds to accompany lots of movement, and this is why snow storms are so eerie....(like a silent movie, or a flock of butterflies). The snow constitutes the background for all the action, which is squeezed, improbably, into a period of three days.

This is a peep into the Turkey of the Turks, a kaliedescope of elements: the political instability, the divisions between secular and religious, the oppressive police activity, various militant factions, both Turkish and Kurdish, and the many & various different flavours of Islam. In the city of Kars, the newspaper is written the day before the news happens, and a revolution is launched in the form of a play... the theatre becomes a political instrument, art and violence are married.

I have to say that I enjoyed this book while I was reading it. Initially, I thought it was interesting but not gripping, but slowly the pace increased and it reached the "hard to put down" quality that characterizes a good read. There was, of course, a romantic dalliance, which seems unlikely in that society, especially in such a brief time span.

However, having finished the book... well, I found myself disappointed. The hero was not only not very heroic... he was a rather sordid, contemptible little man. In the end, he was not very happy, and did not get the girl. Good. I don't think he deserved her.

Nevertheless, it is a clever book, and I did recommend it to some friends. I think, though, that my judgement was more favourable when I was about three-quarters of the way through it, than it was by the time I had finished it.

Harry Hole is a functional alcoholic, unrepentant chain smoking, loner detective on Norway’s Crime Squad when the book begins. The only person he relates to is his partner Ellen Gjelten. Harry causes a diplomatic embarrassment during a visit by the President of the U.S. but the nature of the incident sees Harry promoted to Inspector and transferred to the Norwegian Security Service (POT for short).

His duties in POT consist of reading reports and deciding which should be passed up the line and which are without merit. One of the reports catches Harry’s attention. Someone was test firing a Marklin rifle according the police report of a citizen’s complaint. Harry knows that his rifle would not be useful for hunting in Norway; it is much too powerful, In fact, it is a favored weapon of assassins. Harry is given permission to investigate mainly because his boss doesn’t really know what to do with him. He is supposed to be preparing a report on neo-Nazi plans on Norway’s Independence Day but Harry wants to know who acquired the weapon, how they acquired it, and, most importantly, why.

Though he no longer on the Crime Squad, Harry talks Ellen into helping him gather information and he begins the tedious process of trying to trace the rifle.

National Socialism figures rather prominently in The Redbreast. The action switches between Norway in 1999/2000 and the Eastern Front in WWII with a unit of Norwegians fighting for the Germans. The book gives us a picture of the National Socialist movement, past and present, in Norway.

Harry doggedly attempts to find a trail that will answer his questions but he has to make sense of events that may or not be related.

As a rule, this was not his forte, putting together small pieces of information which didn’t seem to have anything in common.

I thought that The Redbreast was the second Harry Hole story but according to Amazon UK it was written before The Devil’s Star. I prefer to read a series in order and was pleased to learn this. You will get critical back-story by reading this book first.

I enjoyed starting the year off with a bang by finding a favorite within the first two weeks.

Nesbo is an excellent writer and Don Bartlett’s translation into English flowed. It didn’t seem stilted at all. Besides the way time is shown – 9.30 rather than 9:30 – there was only one place where I had to turn to a translation web site. Harry’s sister refers to her boyfriend as a mongo and likes to tell Harry which of the residents in her building were mongos, and those who were only almost. It seems mongo might be short for mongrel and be a way of calling someone a bastard. It fits in context.

Harry an interesting, complex character. It is established that he is an alcoholic but, aside from a couple of benders under stress, it doesn’t seem to affect his job performance. I would say he is likeable and watching his investigative style is interesting particularly the way he and Ellen play off each other’s strengths.

The scenes with the Norwegian soldiers on the Eastern Front are very well done. The reader gets a real sense of the conditions and the resignation that begins to set in amongst the soldiers and the war drags on.

The story is complex and not at all linear. I would say it is more like looking at a map of the coast of Norway with lots of fjords to confuse you. I mean this in a good way. Several times where I thought I had the plot figured out only to have another element introduced that made me doubt. I had to concentrate and I liked that.

My only complaint is that there is a place where a police officer acts in a way that I thought unrealistic. This in a book that otherwise handled police procedures well. If the intent was to leave a set-up for the next book then it could have been handled differently with the same effect. But this won’t stop me from marking the Redbreast a favorite and recommending it highly to anyone who likes thrillers/police procedurals.