From the PR: “Helsinki, 1982. Recently divorced postal worker Ilmari Nieminen has promised his daughter a piano for Christmas, but with six days to go – and no money – he’s desperate.
A last-minute job offers a solution: transport a valuable antique sofa to Kilpisjärvi, the northernmost town in Finland. With the sofa secured in the back of his van, Ilmari stops at a gas station, and an old friend turns up, offering to fix his faulty wipers, on the condition that he tags along. Soon after, a persistent Saab 96 appears in the rearview mirror. And then a right-yellow Lada.
That’s when Ilmari realises that he is transporting something truly special.
And that’s when Ilmari realises he might be in serious trouble…”
A quick scan back through my reviews of his work has revealed to me that I’ve been reading Antti Tuomainen for a decade now, which while a slightly alarming realisation in itself shows that time flies when you’re having fun. The first of his books I read was The Mine, a dark, complex and intelligent thriller that dealt with some pretty heavy themes and had me practically up to my knees in Finnish snow by the time I’d finished it. A year later came The Man Who Died and, well, that was something else entirely.
It was still a thriller, still dark, but it was also ridiculously funny. I loved it enough that it found its way into my 50 Great Reads the following year and, thankfully, Tuomainen clearly enjoyed making that switch as much as I enjoyed reading it. Since then I’ve happily followed him through Palm Beach, Finland, Little Siberia and The Rabbit Factor, with that mixture of crime, increasingly bizarre situations and very dark humour becoming something I’ve come to look forward to whenever a chance to read another of his books appears. Hence it being an absolute no-brainer to say ‘yes please!’ with The Winter Job – which might be the most fun I’ve had with one yet.
I absolutely tore through this book. It’s ridiculously addictive and, once Ilmari and Antero set off across Finland in their clapped-out old Thames van, I felt as though I’d climbed in alongside them and could practically feel the seat under my bum. Admittedly, “tore through” applies more to my reading than their progress; the van isn’t exactly built for speed and that’s before you throw Finnish winter roads into the equation. But somehow, that makes it even better – another cassette going into the player, miles of snow-covered road ahead and an increasing number of reasons to keep checking what’s behind us.
Which kinda brings me back to something I’ve been saying about Tuomainen for years. When I reviewed Little Siberia I called it “a Nordic Noir directed by the Coen Brothers”, and The Winter Job gave me that feeling again in spades. As Ilmari and Antero’s journey becomes increasingly complicated, the confrontations more dangerous and the whole thing just that little bit more absurd, I could – in between fits of laughter – practically see the film playing out in my head. It’s dark, frequently tense and very, very funny, often all at the same time. Credit too, to David Hackston’s translation because comedy is bloody hard enough to get right in one language, let alone another.
But but but but BUUUUT, this is something Tuomainen has always been really good at; stealthily sneaking in addictive characters and real heart beneath all the comedy. I’ve called his books funny before and I’m doing the same again here yet they’re never simply comic crime novels. There’s always something human underneath the increasingly bizarre situations he puts his characters into and here that’s very much Ilmari and Antero. For all the stuff going on around them, I think I’d have happily spent considerably longer in that knackered van listening to cassettes and watching Finland pass by outside. Ilmari and Antero spend much of the journey seemingly on the verge of making some kind of breakthrough, both about their shared past and themselves. They get close to conversations that feel like they might actually take them somewhere, only to be interrupted by the slightly more pressing matter of being ambushed by communists in a Lada or stalked by an increasingly unhinged psychopath with Eye of the Tiger blaring from his car stereo.
Yet, with every mile, you get the feeling they’re getting there. Slowly but surely, like the Thames itself. Beneath all the chaos there’s something genuinely warm about watching these two men gradually chip away at things that have been left unsaid for far too long. I became as invested in that as I did in whether they could actually survive the journey and get the couch – and its contents, about which I’m saying absolutely nothing – safely to where it needs to go.
In the end it feels as though Ilmari and Antero have travelled considerably further than the distance between Helsinki and Kilpisjärvi, and I was genuinely sorry to see the journey come to an end. Thankfully, Tuomainen leaves us with a hint that this may not have to be the case… if there is more from this ‘special delivery firm’, then I’ll be there in a heartbeat with my own bag of cassettes.
My thanks, always, to Karen at Orenda Books for my copy and Anne Cater for inviting me to take part on this blogtour.
