Now wait! Another Scandinavian crime novelist with a middle-aged, hard-drinking, depressed investigator who has made a hash of his career and falls into bed with all the wrong women? Isn’t Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy enough? Jo Nesbo, of Norway—not Sweden—gets a pass in one regard, at least: he published the first of his eight Detective Harry Hole thrillers in 1997, long before Mikael Blomkvist set eyes on Lisbeth Salander. The Snowman, his latest U.S. import, out in May after its rounds on European best-seller lists, is plotted with Larsson-like ingenuity but grislier murders. How about a killer who stalks unfaithful married mothers with a white-hot electric loop designed to decapitate farmyard animals? Ah, that would explain how that snowman in the forest acquired a human head. But why the body in the freezer with its mouth sewn into a snowman-like grin and a carrot for a nose? Nesbo, 50, found a first following in a pop-rock band (di Derre) with hit albums in Norway before putting a new twist on the depressed-detective genre: Harry Hole is a periodic binge drinker ready to blow. “All interesting heroes have an Achilles’ heel,” says Nesbo. “Alcohol is Harry’s kryptonite.” Like Larsson, Nesbo explores the darkest criminal minds with grim delight and puts his killers where you least expect to find them: in plain sight. “I want to show the thin line that separates the hero from his antagonists,” he says. And like Larsson’s, his novels are maddeningly addictive: be prepared for more whirlwind rides through those unpronounceable Scandinavian street names.