Blood on snow A novel

Review by New York Times Review

MEET OLAV JOHANSEN, the antihero of Jo Nesbo's latest thriller, "Blood on Snow." Olav is a departure from Nesbo's familiar Harry Hole, the dogged Norwegian police inspector who has selflessly tracked down killers through 10 international best sellers. Olav isn't a good guy; he's a bad guy. Sort of. At the moment he's a contract killer with a big problem, having spectacularly botched a job that leaves his intended victim alive, and his boss's son dead. Not so much a bungler as a man with a vestigial conscience and an unfortunate tendency to jump to conclusions, Olav judges his character as that of "the sort of person who's just looking for someone to submit to." Or someone to dispatch: Watching blood sink into snow, Olav thinks, with a reptilian sang-froid, of "a king's robe, all purple and lined with ermine," and prefers "to prolong the magical moment when I, and I alone, had power over life and death" by, say, slowly "fixing" a man with a stake. Aside from a taste for murder, Olav lacks criminal skills - he begins his story with an accounting of the "four things I can't be used for." This use of the passive voice isn't accidental; it reminds us here, as it does elsewhere, of Olav's weakness. Because Olav can't drive inconspicuously, or explain the suspicion his driving arouses in police officers, he's useless behind the wheel of a getaway car. He gave up robbery when an old man "fell to pieces" after he pointed a shotgun at him, leaving him guilty enough to follow his victim into the hospital to check on his condition - safe enough, as he was wearing a Santa mask when pointing the gun. Drugs are out. Even if users "only have themselves to blame," Olav's "weak, sensitive nature" makes him prey to addiction; he "can't do math either," a problem for a drug peddler or debt collector. And prostitution requires a pimp to physically abuse women, which Olav cannot abide. "Something to do with my mother, maybe, what do I know?" Olav frequently dismisses himself as a man without the knowledge or education his observations betray, protesting too often - four times in the first, short chapter. Widely read, citing from the likes of George Eliot and Victor Hugo, he demonstrates a tendency to philosophize. He's a vivid stylist: "Two shots. White feathers leaped from his brown jacket, dancing in the air like snow." On the matter of blood falling on snow, he explains that "the shape of the crystals and the dryness of the snow ... make the hemoglobin in the blood retain that deep red color." In an attempt to describe the look on his lover's face, he alludes to Darwin's six universal facial expressions. When he speaks of making love: "It's not out of modesty that I choose this romantic, chaste euphemism instead of a more direct, instrumental word." Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that he's talking about sex with his boss's wife. In either case, Olav's diction illustrates a level of sophistication that precludes his remarking, for example, "There was no mistakin' the way his body was shakin'." As written, "mistaking" and "shaking" retain their g's - their correct form. Olav isn't the emblematic hit man, who is, generally speaking, not among those who concern themselves with grammatical stumbles. Educated, identified by a professor as a student with unusual talent, Olav comes from a blue-collar background that has fueled a leap away from his blighted origins into literature. His determination to separate his identity from those of his drinking, brawling parents makes him a man intently focused on syntax and pronunciation: the last person to drop a g. But, as read by Patti Smith, the audiobook of "Blood on Snow" invisibly revises the portrait of Olav that Nesbo renders on the page. This particular pairing of writer and reader makes it clear that the casting and direction of an audiobook potentially transform the text. Smith's gravelly, androgynous voice and flat tone are immediately recognizable. She's a practiced narrator, having provided the voice-over for a documentary about Robert Mapplethorpe. Her tone and pace are consistent; she calibrates emotion deftly, conveying authorial intent. But is her voice, rather than that of an anonymous reader, the right one for Nesbo's book? Pronunciation changes words, and in this case the diction slips are not only discordant; when they occur, they both halt the reader and erode his or her trust in the narrator. Olav is not typical; to listen to him speak like a hard-boiled hit man is to experience a flattened version of Nesbo's three-dimensional protagonist. It pushes his novel toward genre noir. What would it be like to hear Tom Waits read "To the Lighthouse"? What if we could summon Janis Joplin back from the dead to contribute her voice to "Eat, Pray, Love"? The endless possibilities of mismatches - Peter Lorre lulling the children to sleep with "Goodnight Moon"? - are amusing. They also underscore how words spoken aloud can transform and potentially undermine what a writer puts on the page. "Blood on Snow" ends with a grace that Smith's pronunciation doesn't compromise. Unfortunately, from a few sentences back, "yella" for "yellow" and "pleece" for "police" still echo. KATHRYN HARRISON'S most recent book is "Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 7, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Nesbø tends to serve both small plates and large. The latter are typically novels in the Harry Hole series, multidimensional thrillers that often jump from the present to the past as the many-demoned hero sinks his teeth into a new case; the small plates, on the other hand, like this jewel of a novel, have a much narrower focus, homing in on one character caught in crisis at one sharply lit moment in time. Olav is a killer for hire; it's not that he particularly wants the job, but as a criminal, he can't do anything else well. Too sensitive to rob innocents or feed them drugs; killing is simpler. Until, that is, the boss decides to kill his wife and gives Olav the job. Danger bells clang: too personal, too likely the boss will want to have Olav killed after the job is finished. Oh, and after Olav gets a look at Mrs. Boss, there's another problem: he's in love with her. Attempts to carve a separate peace rarely work; the world is too much with us. Olav knows that but tries anyway; we admire him for it, the horror of his chosen profession notwithstanding. Nesbø tells this small but ­razor-sharp story with precision and understated eloquence, even generating suspense despite the inevitability built into the plot: we know there will be blood on snow, but we're not quite sure whose and how much. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A 60,000 first printing isn't that high for Nesbø, but expect this small plate to draw a big audience all the same.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Olav-a hit man, or "fixer"-narrates this thin standalone from Nesbo (The Son) set in 1970s Oslo. His boss, drug kingpin Daniel Hoffmann, has an unusual assignment for Olav: "He wanted me to fix his wife." Olav sets up surveillance on the beautiful Corina Hoffman from a hotel across the street and watches her let a man into the apartment. It's someone she clearly knows, but the man's first action is to strike her, then he sleeps with her, and Olav figures she's being blackmailed. Olav, whose sympathies shift to Corina, hopes to save her and double-cross his boss in a plot reminiscent of a 1940s American noir novel. A damaged loner, Olav is full of contradictions, but he's more intelligent and emotional than he'll admit, which gives the book a bit of humanity and humor. Nesbo fans will enjoy this slender story, though newcomers may find it altogether too macabre. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden). (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Olav and his employer, a major crime boss, agree that Olav is good for one thing only-serving as a hit man who expertly "fixes" up messes. However, when Olav is commissioned to kill his boss's wife, things start to go south for him. Olav knows if he takes her out, he is in danger of knowing too much and will have to be eliminated as well. He has to figure out a plan that will allow him to please his boss and still survive the contract. Unfortunately when he tails the wife, Olav becomes smitten with his new target. Nesbo steps away from his popular "Harry Hole" series (Police) to create a sympathetic, soft-hearted assassin trying to endure while following orders. This title is one of three short novels Nesbo wrote under the pen name Tom Johansson that have been optioned for movie rights (they were purchased by Leonardo DiCaprio and the movies will possibly star him). -VERDICT Olav is not Harry Hole, but readers will love him just the same. This tender killer who tries to maintain reason and compassion in a brutal world will appeal to Nesbo's fans and generate new followers. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 11/17/14.]-Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Versatile Nesb (The Son, 2014, etc.) switches gears yet again in this chilly whisper of a novella: a hit man's account of a job gone fatally wrong.Christmastide 1977. As the Norwegian days draw ever shorter, Olav Johansen, who in Smith's translation comes across as touchingly sensitive in his banality, reflects on his limitations. He can't drive a getaway car, execute a successful robbery, or have anything to do with drugs or prostitution, and he's dyslexic to boot. The only thing he can do consistently and successfully is kill peoplea skill that's made him very useful to Oslo heroin kingpin Daniel Hoffmann. But Hoffmann's latest request to his fixer is disturbing indeed: He wants Olav to fix his trophy wife, Corina. If he agrees, Olav will know far too much about his boss for comfort; if he refuses, he'll know almost just as much, putting himself in instant danger. So he temporizes, accepting the commission and settling in to watch the Hoffmann apartment. Soon enough he sees his target getting regular visits from a lover who beats and attacks her brutally. Thinking it over, Olav decides to alter the terms of the commission unilaterally, and disaster promptly ensues. The only way he can save himself, Olav decides, is to offer to fix Hoffmann himself for the Fisherman, an upstart rival in the heroin business. He's well-aware that this plan has its problems. In fact, it turns out to have additional problems he hasn't suspected, though many seasoned readers will be ahead of him here. A Nordic noir updating of James M. Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit (1942) with an equally sweet-natured killer at its improbably soft center. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 The snow was dancing like cotton wool in the light of the street lamps. Aimlessly, unable to decide whether it wanted to fall up or down, just letting itself be driven by the hellish, ice-cold wind that was sweeping in from the great darkness covering the Oslo fjord. Together they swirled, wind and snow, round and round in the darkness between the warehouses on the quayside that were all shut for the night. Until the wind got fed up and dumped its dance partner beside the wall. And there the dry, windswept snow was settling around the shoes of the man I had just shot in the chest and neck. Blood was dripping down onto the snow from the bottom of his shirt. I don't actually know a lot about snow--or much else, for that matter--but I've read that snow crystals formed when it's really cold are completely different from wet snow, heavy flakes, or the crunchy stuff. That it's the shape of the crystals and the dryness of the snow that make the haemoglobin in the blood retain that deep red colour. Either way, the snow under him made me think of a king's robe, all purple and lined with ermine, like the drawings in the book of Norwegian folk tales my mother used to read to me. She liked fairy tales and kings. That's probably why she named me after a king. The Evening Post had said that if the cold carried on like this until New Year, 1977 would be the coldest year since the war, and that we'd remember it as the start of the new ice age scientists had been predicting for a while. But what did I know? All I knew was that the man standing in front of me would soon be dead. There was no mistaking the way his body was shaking. He was one of the Fisherman's men. It was nothing personal. I told him as much before he collapsed, leaving a smear of blood down the wall. If I ever get shot, I'd rather it was personal. I didn't say it to stop his ghost coming after me--I don't believe in ghosts. I just couldn't think of anything else to say. Obviously I could have just kept my mouth shut. That's what I usually do, after all. So there must have been something that made me so talkative all of a sudden. Maybe it was because there were only a few days to go before Christmas. I've heard that people are supposed to feel closer to each other around Christmas. But what do I know? I thought the blood would freeze on top of the snow and end up just lying there. But instead the snow sucked the blood up as it fell, drawing it in under the surface, hiding it, as if it had some sort of use for it. As I walked home I imagined a snowman rising up from the snowdrift, one with clearly visible veins of blood under its deathly pale skin of ice. On the way back to my flat I called Daniel Hoffmann from a phone box to tell him the job was done. Hoffmann said that was good. As usual, he didn't ask any questions. Either he'd learned to trust me in the course of the four years I'd been working as a fixer for him, or else he didn't actually want to know. The job was done, so why would a man like him trouble himself with that sort of thing when what he was paying for was to have fewer problems? Hoffmann asked me to go down to the office the next day--he said he had a new job for me. "A new job?" I asked, feeling my heart skip a beat. "Yes," Hoffmann said. "As in a new commission." "Oh, okay." I hung up, relieved. I don't really do much more than commissions. I can't actually be used for much more than that. Here are four things I can't be used for. Driving a getaway car. I can drive fast, that's fine. But I can't drive inconspicuously, and anyone driving a getaway car has to be able to do both. They have to be able to drive so they look just like any other car on the road. I landed myself and two other men in prison because I can't drive inconspicuously enough. I drove like a demon, switching between forest tracks and main roads, and I'd long since lost our pursuers, and was just a few kilometres from the Swedish border. I slowed down and drove in a steady, law-abiding way like a grandad on a Sunday outing. And we still got stopped by a police patrol. They said afterwards that they had no idea it was the car used in the robbery, and that I hadn't been driving too fast or breaking any of the rules of the road. They said it was the way I was driving. I've no idea what they meant, but they said it was suspicious. I can't be used in robberies. I've read that more than half of all bank employees who experience a robbery end up with psychological problems afterwards, some of them for the rest of their lives. I don't know why, but the old man who was behind the counter of the post office when we went in was in a big hurry to develop psychological problems. He fell to pieces just because the barrel of my shotgun was pointed in his general direction, apparently. I saw in the paper the next day that he was suffering from psychological problems. Not much of a diagnosis, but either way, if there's one thing you don't want, it's psychological problems. So I went to visit him in hospital. Obviously he didn't recognise me--I'd been wearing a Santa Claus mask in the post office. (It was the perfect disguise. No one gave a second glance to three lads in Santa Claus outfits carrying sacks as they ran out of a post office in the middle of the Christmas shopping crowds.) I stopped in the doorway to the ward and looked at the old man. He was reading Class Struggle, the Communist newspaper. Not that I've got anything against Communists as individuals. Okay, maybe I have. But I don't want to have anything against them as individuals, I just think they're wrong. So I felt a bit guilty when I realised that I felt a lot better because the bloke was reading Class Struggle. But obviously there's a big difference between feeling a bit guilty and a lot guilty. And like I said, I felt a lot better. But I stopped doing robberies. After all, there was no guarantee the next one would be a Communist. And I can't work with drugs, that's number three. I just can't do it. It's not that I can't get money out of people who are in debt to my employers. Junkies only have themselves to blame, and in my opinion people should pay for their mistakes, plain and simple. The problem's more that I have a weak, sensitive nature, as my mum once put it. I suppose she saw herself in me. Either way, I have to stay well away from drugs. Like her, I'm the sort of person who's just looking for someone to submit to. Religion, a big-brother figure, a boss. Drink and drugs. Besides, I can't do math either, I can hardly count to ten without losing my concentration. Which is kind of stupid if you're going to sell drugs or collect debts--that ought to be pretty obvious. Okay. Last one. Prostitution. Same sort of thing there. I don't have a problem with women earning money whatever way they like, and the idea that a bloke--me, for instance--should get a third of the money for sorting things out so the women can concentrate on the actual work. A good pimp is worth every krone they pay him, I've always thought that. The problem is that I fall in love so quickly, and then I stop seeing it in terms of business. And I can't handle shaking, hitting or threatening the women, whether or not I'm in love with them. Something to do with my mother, maybe, what do I know? That's probably why I can't stand seeing other people beating up women either. Something just snaps. Take Maria, for instance. Deaf and dumb, with a limp. I don't know what those two things have got to do with each other--nothing probably--but it's a bit like once you start getting bad cards, they just keep coming. Which is probably why Maria ended up with an idiot junkie boyfriend as well. He had a fancy French name, Myriel, but owed Hoffmann thirteen thousand for drugs. The first time I saw her was when Pine, Hoffmann's head pimp, pointed out a girl in a home-made coat and with her hair up in a bun, looking like she'd just left church. She was sitting on the steps in front of Ridderhallen, crying, and Pine told me she was going to have to pay back her boyfriend's drug debt in kind. I thought it best to give her a gentle start, just hand-jobs. But she jumped out of the first car she got into after barely ten seconds. She stood there in floods of tears while Pine yelled at her. Maybe he thought she'd hear him if he shouted loud enough. Maybe that was what did it. The yelling. And my mum. Either way, something snapped, and even if I could see what Pine was trying to get into her head by the use of very loud sound waves, I ended up decking him, my own boss. Then I took Maria to a flat I knew was empty, then went to tell Hoffmann that I was no use as a pimp either. But Hoffmann said--and I had to agree with him--that he couldn't let people get away without paying their debts, because that sort of thing soon spreads to other, more important customers. So, well aware that Pine and Hoffmann were after the girl because she'd been stupid enough to take on her boyfriend's debts, I went out looking until I found the Frenchman in a squat up in Fagerborg. He was both wrecked by drugs and broke, so I realised I wasn't going to get a single krone out of him, no matter how much I shook him. I said that if he so much as approached Maria again I'd smash his nose into his brain. To be honest, I'm not sure there was much left of either of them. So I went back to Hoffmann, said the boyfriend had managed to get hold of some money, handed him thirteen thousand and said I presumed that meant hunting season on the girl was over. I don't know if Maria had been a user while they were together, if she was the sort who looked for ways to be submissive, but she seemed pretty straight now, at least. She worked in a small supermarket, and I looked in every now and then to make sure things were okay, and that her junkie boyfriend hadn't popped up to ruin things for her again. Obviously I made sure she couldn't see me, just stood outside in the darkness looking into the well-lit shop, watching her sitting at the till, putting things in bags, and pointing at one of the others if anyone spoke to her. Every so often I suppose we all need to feel that we're living up to our parents. I don't know what Dad had that I could live up to--this is probably more about Mum. She was better at looking after other people than herself, and I suppose I saw that as a kind of ideal back then. God knows. Either way, I didn't really have much use for the money I was earning from Hoffmann. So what if I dealt a decent card to a girl who'd been given such a lousy hand? Anyway. To sum up, let's put it like this: I'm no good at driving slowly, I'm way too soft, I fall in love far too easily, I lose my head when I get angry, and I'm bad at math. I've read a bit, but I don't really know much, and certainly nothing anyone would find useful. And stalactites grow faster than I can write. So what on earth can a man like Daniel Hoffmann use someone like me for? The answer is--as you might have worked out already--as a fixer. I don't have to drive, and I mostly kill the sort of men who deserve it, and the numbers -aren't exactly hard to keep track of. Not right now, anyway. There are two calculations. To start with, there's the one that's ticking away the whole time: When exactly do you reach the point where you know so much about your boss that he starts to get worried? And when do you know he's beginning to wonder if he ought to fix the fixer? Like one of those black widows. Not that I know much about arachnology or whatever it's called, but I think the widows let the males, who are much smaller, fuck them. Then, when he's finished and the female has no more use for him, she eats him. In Animal Kingdom 4: Insects and Spiders in the Deichman Library there's a picture of a black widow with the male's chewed-off pedipalp, which is like the spider's cock, still hanging from her genitals. And you can see the blood-red, hourglass-shaped mark on the female's abdomen. Because the hourglass is running, you pathetic, randy little male spider, and you need to keep to your allotted visiting time. Or, to be more accurate, you need to know when visiting time is over. And then you get the fuck out of there, come what may, with a couple of bullets in the side or whatever--you just have to get away, to the only thing that can save you. That's how I saw it. Do what you have to, but don't get too close. And that's why I was seriously fucking worried about the new job Hoffmann had given me. He wanted me to fix his wife. Excerpted from Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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