Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) has signed on to direct The SnowmanMartin Scorsese was attached to direct the adaptation of Jo Nesbo's crime thriller as of 2011.  Variety reports Scorsese will instead executive produce alongside Nesbo, Niclas Salomonsson, Liza Chasin, and Amelia Granger.  Alfredson will work on the script with Soren Sveistrup, the creator behind Forbrydelsen (the Danish series that inspired The Killing).

The Snowman is one of ten novels about "loose cannon" detective Harry Hole.  Hole investigates the disappearance of a dozen women who went missing on the day of the first snowfall, including one whose pink scarf is tied around an "ominous-looking snowman."  Read the book synopsis after the jump.

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf.

Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother—and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised—and constantly revised—by the killer. [Amazon]

Check out the book trailer:

the-snowman-book-cover