Snow Angels

✍ Scribed by James M. Thompson

• Publisher: Berkley Trade
• Year: 2010;2014
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 142 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

"A masterful job." -Michael Connelly

It is called kaamos-two weeks of unrelenting darkness and soul-numbing cold that falls upon Finnish Lapland, a hundred miles into the Arctic Circle, just before Christmas. Some get through it with the help of cheap Russian alcohol; some sink into depression.

This year, it may have driven someone mad enough to commit murder. The brutalized body of a beautiful Somali woman has been found in the snow, and Inspector Kari Vaara must find her killer. It will be a challenge in a place where ugly things lurk under frozen surfaces, and silence is a way of life.

From Publishers Weekly

American-born Thompson, who's lived in Finland for the past decade, offers a bleak look at the ravages of that country's long, dark winter as well as intriguing glimpses of Finnish culture in his solid U.S. debut, the first in a new crime series. Shortly before Christmas, Kari Vaara, the police chief of the Lapland town of Kittilä, gets a phone call informing him that the body of Sufia Elmi, a Somali refugee and minor film star, has been found in a snowfield on a reindeer farm. The victim has also been mutilated, perhaps raped, and a racial slur carved into her flesh. When Kari's ex-wife's lover becomes the prime suspect, Kari spurns the chance to recuse himself and presses on. The winter hazards of alcoholism, suicide and murder all play a part as Kari uncovers more suspects. Sufia's imperious father, Abdi Barre, who was a doctor in his native country and now runs a cleaning service, puts added pressure on Kari. Tangled smalltown relationships and lust also fuel this noirish thriller. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Starred Review American born Finnish resident Thompson’s first novel is set in northern Finland during kaamos, the country’s two weeks of complete darkness. Inspector Vaara is newly married and about to become a father, but his American wife finds northern Finland depressing and lonely, especially after a young Somali movie star is brutally murdered, and the case consumes Vaara’s days and nights. Vaara has been chief of police in his small hometown ever since being injured as a young beat cop in Helsinki, and the few murders that have come his way have been easily solved domestic disputes or drunken bar fights. That’s not the case this time, but Vaara refuses to give up, even after finding out that his ex-wife might be involved. Thompson’s portrait of Lapland in the depths of winter is starkly and realistically drawn; as an American who lives in Finland, he is able to make an insular society and a forbidding landscape comprehensible for readers who have never been in such an extreme climate. Vaara will remind readers of Hakan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren (with less shouting); like Snow Angels, the Van Veeteren mysteries (Borkmann’s Point, 2006) feature the same tightly plotted and twisty story lines involving both personal and professional lives. The setting should appeal to readers of Asa Larsson’s Rebecka Martinsson series, set in the far north of Sweden. An outstanding series debut. --Jessica Moyer