Well, okay. I really enjoyed the setting, both as premise and description. In this respect at least, it's not bad writing. It's also not a small amount of the book, so that weighs heavy in my rating.

However. There is a practical limit on how many unique, lurid murders and coincidental subplots you can work into a story before it becomes absurd and off-putting. This had arguably too many for a series, never mind a single book. Crime novels are candy for the logic and puzzle-solving appetite of my brain, but only when they have a bit of reason and logic in them.

Will I read another one? Yeah, probably. On the chance that the things I didn't like were just a rush of first-novel enthusiasm. ( )

En Kaamos, justo antes de Navidades, la época más sombría del año en el Círculo Ártico, una bella inmigrante somalí aparece brutalmente asesinada en un campo nevado y presenta un extraño símbolo racial grabado en el pecho. Cuando Kari Vaara empiza su investigación, sabe que debe intentar mantener este crimen tan en secreto como sea posible porque constituiría un escándalo en una Finlandia que vive su xenofobia con vergüenza. Además, las exigencias que una investigación de este tipo tiene empiezan a pasar factra al matrimonio de Vaara. Por un lado, su mujer estadounidense, Kate, lucha por adaptarse tanto al difícil clima ártico como a la cultura del silencio y la soledad que caracterizan Finlandia. Por el otro, Vaara, quien está atormentado por su durísima infancia y primer matrimonio fracasado, descubre que el pasado llama a su puerta de nuevo: sus sospechas sobre el asesino de la joven somalí recaen, principalmente, en el hombre por el que su primera mujer le dejó.

More a note to myself than a review, cause otherwise I'll just forget the book entirely.
I wanted to give it 3 stars because I obediently read it for hours and finished in three days, but... no.
At the beginning I thought the plot was quite interesting and I even continued reading after excruciatingly detailed description of the victim's wounds and suffering.
But when the story goes further the amount of shit happening per page becomes just unbelievable.
I am not going to read more of this series but I kinda hope the next one will be set in Helsinki or another big city, because if the author again kills a bunch of people in this small town (or was it a village even?) there will be no one left. ( )

Sufia Elmi, a beautiful Somalian refugee-turned-actress is brutally murdered on a reindeer farm, with a racial slur carved into her chest. Inspector Kari Vaara investigates and suspicion justly falls on the philandering boyfriend of his callous ex-wife; however, the autopsy reveals that two more possible suspects, one of whom commits suicide, substantially complicating the investigation because of his identity. Kari's pregnant American wife helps him remain grounded, acting a sounding board for his theories until the ex-wife ends up killed by a tire necklace, introducing yet another suspect. Scandanavian politics and life in perpetual winter are an integral part of the story. 3.5 stars.
( )

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. ( )