Snow Angels
by James Thompson
January 2010
An early review copy was provided by G. P. Putnam's Sons - a division of Penguin Group (USA)
From the Publisher -
"The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara: the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark and violent underbelly.
Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane . . . perhaps enough to kill.
A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime-or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially ex plosive case out of the national headlines or else it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.
The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: He suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.
Endless night can drive anyone to murder."
Snow Angels, written in the noir style, details the gruesome murder of a Somali refugee and B movie star just prior to Christmas on the frozen fields of a reindeer farm. The first title in this debut Finnish series, Snow Angels is permeated by bleakness, despair, and violence - common themes in noir - but Inspector Kari Vaara doesn't quite stay in character as the expected pessimistic, bitter detective; Vaara's a bit more sympathetic bringing compassion to this otherwise grim crime.
This Nordic thriller is not for the faint-of-heart. Like many contemporary Nordic crime novels it deals with depression, isolation, and alcoholism in an unflinching manner and in this case is quite heavy with the graphic violence and sexual brutality. The book is fast paced with the violence escalating quickly in this small community involving a few too many improbable coincidences and personal connections to be quite believable. While the compassion of Vaara's character is a welcome relief to the violence the ending was a bit disappointing and not in keeping with the book's noir style. It seemed purposefully aimed at a stereotypical American audience, one brought up to expect happy endings or at least resolutions. That said James Thompson is a very promising writer and it will be interesting to follow the development of Inspector Vaara and the series.
From the Publisher -
"The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara: the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark and violent underbelly.
Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane . . . perhaps enough to kill.
A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime-or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially ex plosive case out of the national headlines or else it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.
The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: He suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.
Endless night can drive anyone to murder."
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