Book review: Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo - love, murder and mayhem in Norway
American actor Leonardo DiCaprio was apparently so taken with Jo Nesbo's latest story set in Norway, Blood on Snow, that Warner Bros snapped up the film rights for him. It's not difficult to see why.
by Jo Nesbo
Harvill Secker
This punchy, cut-to-the-chase novella introduces the sympathetic anti-hero Olav, a hitman with a heart, just as he is adding more blood to snow, having shot his latest victim in the chest and throat.
"The man standing in front of me would soon be dead … It was nothing personal. I told him as much before he collapsed, leaving a smear of blood down the wall."
For all Olav's ruthless efficiency in the service of his brutal gangster boss, Daniel Hoffman, he has a conscience, too. He draws the line at any involvement in prostitution and drug taking, and his sympathetic nature even leads him to clear a junkie's substantial debts himself rather than see the man's deaf-mute girlfriend prostitute herself to pay them off. "I didn't really have much use for the money I was earning from Hoffman. So what if I dealt a decent card to a girl who'd been given such a lousy hand?"
Olav also keeps a paternal watch over her to make sure she is safe. "She worked in a small supermarket, and I looked in every now and then to make sure things were OK, and that her junkie boyfriend hadn't popped up to ruin things for her again."
Olav's own troubles begin just as he is looking to make a change to his lonely existence. His boss orders him to carry out his next "hit" on Hoffman's cheating wife, Corina, and make it look as if it took place during a break-in.
