Book club discusses "Snow Angel" [July]

As the year is winding up, it is time to finish up certain matters and one for me is recapping book club discussions I missed earlier here.

One summer selection this year did often up a chill as we read James Thompson's debut thriller Snow Angels. Here's a copy of the same pix Thompson has on his website. Set in Lapland, Finland during the Christmas holiday season, the police are set upon an investigation of a gruesome murder of a Somali immigrant. The victim, Sufia Elmi, is an actress with a modestly-successful series of movies behind her and is staying in the area under the generous assistance of a private benefactor.

Then abruptly, she is violently murdered and left in an outdoor location with a racial epithet carved in her flesh.

The resourceful Inspector Kari Vaara is charge of the investigation and he has a challenging time with the apparent appearance of a hate crime and devoting attention to his pregnant American-born wife. A few of our observations of the book during our discussion included the following:

• the writer does an affective job setting mood with the despondent nature of some Finnish people and how it can show up through heavy drinking (along those lines, one attendee mentioned how in a social setting that some from that part of the world would seemingly only perk up after some drinking although another person wondered if the "Finns" were displeased by the author's overall characterization of them--writer James Thompson is a native American but lives in Finland's capital of Helsinki)
• the constant cold weather and type of community that results of such led to discussions about coping with colder temps in some parts of the U.S. where others had lived
• the book was well-received for good writing and a good mystery with a ending perhaps strangely fitting for the novel (while another take is that the ending feels rushed in relation to the story)
• Inspector Vaara takes a jack-of-all trades persona at work as a supervisor, detective and crime scene investigator (complete with equipment he conveniently stores in his car)--sometimes the job requires all those tasks
• the novel does have an additional element of conflict--should Vaara get outside help to run the case especially when an ex-wife becomes involved
• the book's title has a partially sharp ring as the Sufia's mother once appears to talk to her deceased daughter and gestures to the sky saying [in part] "...my angel..."

Writer James Thompson wrote the library's website (cmlibrary.org) a short message when he read the book club was using his book and I emailed him on behalf of the book club but signals got crossed, I guess, and I didn't hear from him. According to his website, a sequel to Snow Angels is coming entitled Dead of Winter.