Snowbound in the Norwegian Alps or The Scandinavian Phenomenon Strikes Again

1222; a Hanne Wilhelmsen novel [by] Anne Holt;

translated by Marlaine Delangy

New York; Scribner, 2011

9781451634716; $25.00



Imagine being hurtled through the bleak, snowy countryside on a train filled with a collection of priests and church members on their way to a conference, a group of doctors going to present at a convention, a bunch of teenage girls, members of a handball team, and an assortment of individuals, including a baby girl, a member of organized crime, a few rather seedy-looking and questionable young men, a Goth girl, a South African, two supposed Kurds, three Germans, a shrill television presenter, assorted businessmen, a woman who knits, and a former police officer in a wheelchair.  Then, imagine that the train driver makes a false move and crashes the train into an abutment inside a tunnel, so that the train is expelled out of the tunnel at great speed, derailed, jackknifed and in great ragged pieces as it enters the lonely depot, having killed the driver and thrown all of its occupants hither and yon, in various states of disrepair.  There you have imagined the first scene in Anne Holt’s 1222; a Hanne Wilhelmsen novel.

This is the first book in English, with a small taste of the first of the series, Blind Goddess, at the back (due out this June).  It’s the eighth in the Wilhelmsen series, when Hanne has more or less perfected her acerbic persona and misanthropic attitude towards her fellow human beings.  A police shootout several years before ended with the criminal apprehended, but not before his bullet had severed Hanne’s spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed in a wheelchair.  Holt is a best-selling author in her native Norway, and joins the ever-growing Scandinavian onslaught on English-speaking crime fiction readers in the wake of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, and others.  Holt has good credentials as a lawyer and former Minister of Justice.

The battered passengers are cared for and welcomed to the hotel called Finse 1222, so-named because it is 1,222 meters above sea level, by its owner Berit. The passengers are assigned rooms in the four main buildings in the village, all of which serve the train station.  The storm around them rages on, with winds escalating, and mountains of snow dumping on them.  When finally rescued, they learn that the storm had been named Hurricane Olga, but while they are snowbound, the weather is of little concern.  After all, the hotel has stood for 100 years, and it is well-staffed and fully stocked with food and drink.

The first night one of the priests is found just outside the hotel door, partially covered with snow, with a bullet in his head.  His body is hidden by Berit and a local man, Geir, who is also a soliciter.  The others who know are Dr. Streng, the little-person who’d treated Hanne when a ski pole impaled her thigh in the wreck, and, reluctantly, Hanne herself.  Obviously, there is at least one person with a gun in their midst.  They feel a need to forestall panic, which they have seen when the television personality challenges them several times, so they keep the murder quiet.

Hanne spends much of her time observing the other hotel guests and speculating about them, as well as having philosophical conversations with Geir and Streng.  She muses deeply about Norwegian society and the character of the average Norwegian.  Unfortunately, she isn’t able to hear the speculations of another priest on the death of the first before the second is also murdered by what appears, from the resulting wound, to be an icicle.
 
Later, damage from the snow reverberates through the hotel, causing panic. In a brief moment the couple Hanne has assumed to be Kurds drop into a military firing stance, with handguns aimed at the staircase.  No one else notices, but Hanne sees that they are not what they seem to be.  In fact, that seems to be true of many there.  A man who escaped through an upstairs window, but dies in the weather, proves to be a gangster.  Although the storm eventually blows itself out, the tension in the hotel builds and builds, as might be registered on the Beaufort Wind Force Scale, a statement from which serves as an epigram before each chapter.

And what about the secretive party locked in an upper floor room after rescue from the mysterious last car, added to the train at the last minute – the one with armed guards?  Its presence is targeted and questioned, creating some panic, and then dismissed and forgotten.

This is essentially an icy version of the classic locked-room mystery, complete with a final reveal-all scene for Hanne, who, in the presence of all of the guests and the rescuing police, targets various suspects with questions, before finally unmasking the villain, and realizes that she misses police work.
The only false note, I felt, in the whole book, came about at the end, when the last tag-end needs to be tied up:  the explanation of the mysterious party, which is whisked away by black helicopter.  It was not fully explained, and what was there made me feel just a little bit cheated, especially since everything else was so rich and meaty.  It felt like an afterthought, more obvious because it was at the end.

This book has certainly whetted my appetite for the previous books in the series.  Fortunately, the earlier books are lined up for publication in the next few years.  Highly recommended.  ~ lss-r

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Reviewed from a copy borrowed from my Public Library.
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