November. It was going to get even darker.

The first snow has fallen in Oslo and a young boy awakens to find his mother gone, the only trace is her pink  scarf that is tied around the neck of the mysterious snowman that has appeared in the yard. Jonas doesn’t know who built the snowman or why it is facing the house, but he does know enough to be afraid.

Meanwhile, Harry Hole is assigned to the case and along with a new transfer from Bergen, Katrina Bratt, they search for clues to this disappearance. When another woman goes missing, they make an even more disturbing discovery: this time the victim has been decapitated and her head placed on top of a snowman out in the woods. Soon, they find a string of similar disappearances, going back over a decade. While Harry is sure there is a single person responsible, he gets a lot of resistance from higher-ups and colleagues who believe he just has serial killers on the brain.

This book has excellent pacing, though the glut of red herrings got a little exasperating. Harry does have his few allies within the force but as is his wont, he investigates much of this on his own. This puts him in the crosshairs of an unbalanced colleague as well as the Snowman, as the serial killer comes to be called. Throughout the book, Harry is still struggling with alcohol, as well as the breakup with Rakel. And because he apparently hasn’t suffered enough, her life is at stake in the heart-pounding denouement.

I’d have to say this is my favorite HH book so far and it’s easy to see why this is the first Hole novel to be optioned by a movie studio. At one time, Scorcese was attached, but now Tomas Alfredson, who directed the stellar Let the Right One In is listed on Imdb. Ooooh, that could be soooo good.