Crimezine pounces on The Leopard, by Jo Nesbø

The Leopard: Grusome

Here comes The Leopard, by hot shot flavor of the month—the Nebuchadnezzar of Nordic Noir, Jo Nesbø.

Now Mr Nesbø, is the author of the serial killer schlocker The Snowman, which is not exactly Crimezines cup of fijord flavored hot-fondue. But legendary filmmaker Martin Score-sleazy is in disagreement, and he has decided to make The Snowman into a movie [As Exclusively reported in Crimezine] Well, hurrah to that! We are sure Marty will tune up the story considerably.

Crimezine has been impressed by previous Nesbø efforts, The Devils Star and The Red Breast and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these tales to Crimeziners everywhere.

Why then should The Leopard be any different? We hear you ask. Well— fans of films such as The Saw, Final Destination and the charming Hostel series, will no doubt love this book.

But for others, this bloated shock fest of serial killer torture and mindless splatter core pukiness will have you chocking into a barf-bag after page four, and this gory-borey tome is five hundred —count ’em—pages long.

No doubt you will hear marketeers try and convince you that Jo Nesbø is the new Stieg, Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Larson. This is not true. He is Thomas Harris with a chainsaw and a tool-kit full of sharpened screwdrivers.

So what of the story? Well, Harry Hole has made an opium-smoking sojourn to Hong Kong, after his gruesome encounter with The Snowman, only to be persuaded back to Norway by the piranha toothed Kaja, who tells him his father is dying. What follows is a web of inane chat, dumb gags and half-baked memories, from touchy feely childhoods, that it’s hard to give a damn about.

Layered throughout this, we get a collection of gruesome torture killings seemingly related to a meeting at a ski-lodge. Confusion reigns. The plot is by turn nonsensical, then preposterous, and just when you think respite is heading your way, Harry heads to the Congo, where further scenes of carnage ensue: rape, gore, genocide, mutilation. But all is not lost Crimeziners. Heroic Harry Hole rushes to the rescue, saving the innocents who are the subject of his mission of mercy from death in a fiery Volcano. We kid you not. We hoped Tarzan would swing in to cheer things up. Unfortunately he never did.

Jo Nesbø can do much better than this, his public expects it and so does Crimezine.

 

Martin Scorsese makes a Snowman

Scorsese: I want a carrot nose and twigs for arms…

We kid you not Crimeziners legendary Director Martin Scorsese is returning to the crime genre with an adaptation of Thriller The Snowman by Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø. The Snowman is the seventh book in the fijord fancying writers hardboiled Harry Hole series.

Hole is a Maverick cop tasked with catching a fiendish serial killer, who leaves a snowman at crime scenes. We know, it’s not exactly Goodfella’s is it Crimeziners? Are we to expect cable knit sweaters and fijord flavored hot fondue too?

Scorsese has made comment recently regarding his disappointment that his young kids cannot see his films, hence the mucho out of character Hugo. Perhaps the Snowman idea will follow in this vein?

Kidult entertainment is the next big thing after all. Even Harlan Coben has come out with a Kidult crime book recently. His new book Shelter features the adventures of Myron Bolitar’s naughty nephew Mickey. Crimezine hasn’t found the opportunity to read it loud at bedtime however, as we know the bloodthirsty kidults of our acquaintance are eagerly awaiting the video game.

Still we digress. Jo Nesbø is the latest Scandanavian writer to break big, in what is rapidly becoming a crime wave tsunami of fijordish crime fiction, there is also Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell and of course Girl with the Dragon Tattoo creator Steig Larsson.

The word on Hollyweird Boulevard is that Mathew Michael Carnahan is writing The Snowman script, hot on the heels of his work on Zombie flick World War Z featuring Brad Pitt. Though how much actual script writing was needed on this picture, one has to wonder…

Still, Scorsese is the man as far as Crimezine is concerned and we look forward with baited breath, to the emergence of his new crime masterpiece. We know it will have Crimeziners everywhere—walking in the air—chortle.