SOURCE: Smiley, Jane. “In Distant Lands of Ice and Sun.” Washington Post Book World 23, no. 43 (24 October 1993): 1, 11.

In the following positive review, Smiley applauds Høeg's redevelopment of the mystery genre in Smilla's Sense of Snow.

It's not hard to tell that Peter Høeg, the Danish author of Smilla's Sense of Snow, has been, among other things, a mountaineer, an actor and a sailor. The novel, his first to be translated into English, is bursting with hows—how arctic ice is formed; how to get to Greenland from Denmark by ship; how the Inuit world view, i.e., that of the Eskimos of North America and Greenland, differs from the European; how to swim in freezing water and survive; how to win the confidence of lifelong employees of a powerful and vindictive corporation; how the shipping industry works. In fact, one thing that Smilla's Sense of Snow reminds...