Name: Snow Angels
ISBN: 9781847562272

James Thompson

A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the 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 case out of the national headlines or else it will send shock waves across Finland, a nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.

Snow Angels

A first entry in a new series introduces Inspector Kari Vaara, a hardened detective who investigates the racially charged murder of a Somali immigrant during a bitterly cold and dark Christmas season in Finland, a case that takes its toll on his marriage to his pregnant American wife.

rumbledethumps

In what can be described as noir-procedural, James Thompson introduces Inspector Vaara, a Police Chief limping among the villages and ski resorts of northern Finland. Snow Angels is the first novel of an expected series, and it opens with the mutilation murder of a Somali-born star of Finnish B-movies.

As the mystery begins to wend its way into Vaara's personal life, the bodies pile up and his home-life suffers. He never seems to take action, letting events roll over him until he is forced to act, then inevitably makes the wrong decision. He is blind to the simple explanations, instead choosing to believe his own concoction of wealthy conspirators and international intrigue. In the final pages, little he has done has helped solve the mystery.

Thompson writes all of this in the present tense, which I presume is meant to make it feel more immediate, but just feels more like a gimmick than anything else. Plus, it creates confusion: "I've still never figured out if [he] is a good actor, smarter than he seems, or if he really is the complete dolt I take him for." When did this thought happen? Is it at the time of the events happening in the next sentence, or is it in retrospect, after the case has been closed?

But, Thompson is excellent at conveying a sense of place. His Finland in December is dark, depressing, and drunk, and through Vaara's American wife, the reader understands exactly how forbidding this place is to outsiders. It's rare for a novel set in Europe to feel foreign, but Thompson accomplishes this quite well.

Overall, Snow Angels was uneven and unbelievable, but Thompson shows some promise.

Alfredo santos

Inspector Kari Vaara investigates the racially-charged murder of a Somali immigrant during a bitterly cold and dark Christmas season in Finland, a case that takes its toll on his marriage to his pregnant American wife.

Snow Angels

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