Murder So Foul in Norway

I just finished up Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman (that’s Nesbo with a slashed o). It’s a mystery thriller set in Oslo, featuring Detective Harry Hole as the bad-boy cop—an alcoholic, lustful, independent cuss but also a man with, of course, honor. He’s a noir prototype, and Nesbo doesn’t push the crime genre boundaries in his Hole series. When I pick up a Nesbo thriller, I read it to experience a police procedural in a Norwegian setting. Of course, I also read it to try and solve the mystery before the authorities do. Yeah, I solved it, but the clues were obvious. Nesbo provides the red herrings and twists, but his central conceit, the snowman, disappoints. It's quite a haunting image, but the snowman feats the perp concocts are almost impossible to accomplish. Rating: three out of five stars.

And this brings me round to what I’ve been pondering today on my deck: I read mysteries as entertainment, which means I read them quickly. (Think grilled bratwurst instead of lamb on a spit.) Nonetheless, as many as I finish, there are probably just as many that I don’t. If the writing is too dreadful, the characters too dull, I put the book back in a pile for the library drop box. Life is too short to adhere to any work ethic that requires finishing what you start. So I ask myself, why do I bother to read genre fiction at all? Why not stick to great novels—for a masterly one captures your imagination and your heart, and it stays with you, long after turning the last page. One possible answer is that I’ve become a multi-task reader. I want to simultaneously use my imagination and my analytical skills, and novels without mystery often don't allow me to do so. (The multi-tasking also explains why there’s always more than one book on my bedside table.) And, as a self-exiled ivy-tower type, I no longer write essays to satisfy my urge to analyze, so perhaps mysteries fill that void. That said, I feel it’s time to tackle some Tolstoy. But first, I want to prop my feet up and raise my ice-cold glass in a toast to Norwegian snow. Skal.