The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

This is the first Jo Nesbo book I've read, after hearing many rave reviews about his work. It's also the first book I read in kindle format, so a new experience all round. I didn't know what I was expecting from the title, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nesbo has been compared to Stieg Larsson, perhaps largely due to the genre and home country they share, but I actually preferred this book to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy.
The story starts with a mother leaving her young child in a car in freezing weather while she enjoys a final tryst with her lover. There's a snowman in the yard and, as the title suggests, this comes to have more significance as the tale unfolds.
Fastforward to the present day, and the first snowfall of the season and a young woman, married with children, has gone missing without a trace, apart from a series of wet footprints on the stairs. There's a snowman on the front lawn...
Soon, after several similar cases crop up, Detective Harry Hole realises there's a disturbingly intelligent, sick serial killer on the loose - The Snowman - and it's his job to put a stop to his hideous hobby. Although initially a tale of two missing women, the story develops rapidly as you turn each page and it becomes so much more than you're originally lead to believe.
From then on, you're flung back and forth between the past and present, and introduced to a plethora of suspicious characters along the way as this genius, complex story takes shape. It's not hard to guess who the murderer is, indeed I don't think it's supposed to be. But the brilliance lies in the way the author manages to keep you on the edge of your seat despite this fact, with so many twists and turns your head is spinning by the end of it.
I don't want to go into detail for fear of giving too much away but if you enjoy a good crime thriller, put this one at the top of your 'to buy' list.