Blood on Snow

Jo Nesbo

Average Rating 5/10 (1 Review)

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Harry Hole novels a fast, tight, darkly lyrical stand-alone novel that has at its center the perfectly sympathetic antihero: an Oslo contract killer who draws us into an unexpected meditation on death and love.

This is the story of Olav: an extremely talented fixer for one of Oslo s most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer. He has a capacity for love that is as far-reaching as is his gift for murder. He is our straightforward, calm-in-the-face-of-crisis narrator with a storyteller s hypnotic knack for fantasy. He has an innate talent for subordination but running through his veins is a virus born of the power over life and death. And while his latest job puts him at the pinnacle of his trade, it may be mutating into his greatest mistake...

'Striking in its simplicity… Nesbo is a writer at the top of his game who continues to amaze in new and confounding ways.'

'Deserves to be a smash... A perfectly pitched thriller.'

Review by Ben Macnair (300417) Rating (5/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 5/10
Jo Nesbo is best known as the creator of Detective Harry Hole in a number of his novels, but the central character in Blood on Snow couldn’t be any further removed from Nesbo’s most famous creation. Olav is a fixer. He fixes people. Terminally. So he is an assassin for hire, down on his luck, removing the tiny obstacles from people’s lives.

He has a code that he lives by, but it becomes increasingly complicated, when he falls for his boss’s wife, and his next job is to kill her. As he tries to protect her, whilst going about his usual business, he realises that there is no easy way out of his dilemma, and if he doesn’t kill her himself, his own life will be put at risk, particularly if his boss finds about the relationship that is swiftly developing between the two.

As we have come to expect from Nesbo, the book starts with a bang, and continues, through many action set-pieces, as Olav fixes a number of people throughout the book. We learn about his favourite ways of assassination, of his relationship with his family, of the life choices he made that led to his current occupation.

This is an action packed read, with characterisation, and crime pushed to the forefront.
Ben Macnair (30th April 2017)