Nykänen in my newspaper

My review of Harri Nykänen's novel Nights of Awe appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer under the headline "A Finnish thriller stars a Jewish cop."

Click the link to find out why I call Nykänen

"part of the blinding ice storm of Nordic crime writing that has buffeted the world since Stieg Larsson died and went to publishing heaven"

and add that

"he stands out from the crowd for at least two reasons: his deadpan humor, and his thrilling ability to sustain narrative pace on little but routine details, personal interactions, and professional observations over the course of a police investigation."

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Nights of Awe

The protagonist of Harri Nykänen's Nights of Awe is named Ariel Kafka, and he's one of two Jewish police officers in Helsinki.

Now, Finland's entire Jewish population is no bigger than a couple of good-sized Long Island bar-mitzvahs, so it's no shock that Jews would be somewhat exotic figures there. Nykänen has Kafka react with head-shaking amusement to well-meaning questions about Jews, and the deadpan humor is of a piece with what Nykänen did so well in Raid and the Blackest Sheep.

Kafka's Jewish identity figures also in the crimes that drive this story, a series of killings of Arabs that eventually involves drugs, trains, cars, Israeli diplomats, the Mossad intelligence service, and friends and others from Kafka's own past. To say too much more would risk spoilers, except that things, as in all good mysteries, are not what they seem, even when you think you've figured out what's what and who's who.

The novel's title refers to the Jewish high holidays, the Days of Awe, when observant Jews repent of their sins. Nykänen presumably intends moral weight, but a character named Kafka needs no help from the calendar to get introspective. The story could have been set any time in the year.

***

The book was smoothly translated into English by Kristian London, an American who lives in Helsinki. The fluency of the translation is especially noticeable in the novel's first half, which consists largely of routine police detail and dialogue, where the prose, and not the action, must hold readers' attention.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Nordic crime is more than just a barrel of laughs

Nordic crime fiction has been in the spotlight here at Detectives Beyond Borders, notably the question of what, if any, characteristics are common to crime writing from the Nordic countries.

With that in mind, two bits from Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall, by Finland's Jarkko Sipila, typify what I suspect many people would regard as typically Nordic:

"Finland was home to one of the top per capita homicide rates in Western Europe, but most slayings were the result of drug and alcohol addicts solving their disputes with whatever weapons they could get their hands on."

and

"Over a million semi-trucks passed from Finland to Russia every year. It was impossible to track all the imports and exports. ... The incidents of fraud were numbered in the thousands, or tens of thousands, but investigators were numbered in the tens."

Resignation. Fatalism. What does Nordic/Scandinavian crime fiction mean to you?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A Finnish crime novel that's all deadpan, all the time

I like my cold, gray Nordic crime fiction sprinkled with a bit of humor, and Harri Nykanen obliges in Raid and the Blackest Sheep.

Deadpan humor is plentiful in crime fiction from countries in the Scandinavian cultural sphere, but the first third of this Finnish crime novel  is all deadpan, and the effect is novel, as if a joke is liable to break out at any moment.

One nice touch: Further evidence that Nordic writers' are willing to poke fun at their countries' reputations for vigorous good health. Here's Helsinki Police Lt. Jansson moping his way through a stay at a health center:

"The decision to stay in bed had nothing to do with a hangover. Having only drunk moderately, he felt reasonably alert. He simply had no desire to submit to the hazing of another physical therapist. `Doesn't Jansson's back bend?'  `Jansson, tuck in your belly.' `Jansson, breathe deeply.'"

That's a nice companion piece to the stone-massage ordeal Iceland's Yrsa Sigurðardóttir puts her protagonist through in My Soul to Take.

***

Raid and the Blackest Sheep come from the commendable newish publishing house Ice Cold Crime, an American publishing house dedicated to translating and promoting Finnish fiction,

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Scandinavian crime writing goes to school

From co-editor Paula Arvas at the University of Helsinki comes news of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, a collection of articles that calls itself the first English-language study of the subject. The book has apparently been in the works awhile and is about to see the light of the day (th0ugh I'm not sure how much light there is in the Nordic lands this time of year.)

According to the cover blurb,

"This collection of articles studies the development of crime fiction in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden since the 1960s ... Scandinavian Crime Fiction identifies distinct features and changes in the Scandinavian crime tradition through analysis of some of its most well-known writers: Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, Anne Holt, Liza Marklund, Leena Lehtolainen and Arnaldur Indriðason, among others. Focusing on Scandinavian crime fiction's snowballing prominence since the 1990s, articles concentrate on the transformation of the genre's social criticism, study of significance of cultural and geographical place in the tradition and analyse the cultural politics of crime fiction, including struggles over gender equity, sexuality, ethnicity, history and the fate of the welfare state."

I've written about geography in Arnaldur's novels, and I've been reading those pioneers in the genre's social criticism, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, so I'll look forward to this one. You should, too.

(The book appears to be the third in the University of Wales Press' European Crime Fictions series. Earlier volumes featured French and Italian crime fiction.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Finnish crime comes to America

Readers in the English-speaking crime-fiction world like to gripe about the dearth of translated fiction in their language. Over at Pulpetti, Juri Nummelin reports on a Finnish crime writer who took matters into his own hands and, with his brother who works on Wall Street, started his own publishing house to get his work out in America.

First up from their new Ice Cold Crime is founder Jarkko Sipilä's own Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall. And more is on the way. Says Juri:

"Ice Cold Crime is publishing next another book by Sipilä, whose work is strictly rooted in the police procedural and its hardboiled subgenre. Then they'll probably publish something by Harri Nykänen. Nykänen is slightly better known in the US, since the Raid TV series made from his novels was shown in some cable channels there."

See Sipilä's Web site for more info. Read a summary of Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Free Finnish fiction

A comment from the Finnish crime writer Tapani Bagge alerts Detectives Beyond Borders that more of his work is available free and online.

This is good news. Bagge's story "The Face in the Concrete," which I wrote about here last year, is one of the touchstones of my argument that Nordic crime fiction can be funnier than you think.

Visit Bagge's Web site for links to "The Face in the Concrete," three additional stories, and an excerpt from his novel Black Sky.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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A cool, clean, well-organized Scandinavian-crime Web site

Barbara Fister, creator of the Carnival of the Criminal Minds, is also a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Both the name and the place are clues: They take their Swedish heritage seriously there.

That's why Barbara has created a page devoted to Scandinavian crime fiction on the college library's Web site. "Since I work at a Swedish heritage college in Minnesota with a Scandinavian Studies program," she writes, "I thought we had an obligation to host a site for Scandinavian crime fiction." A touchingly simple recognition of a sizable Scandinavian contribution to current culture, I'd say.

The site is clean and well-organized, as one would respect from a librarian, and broken down by authors and countries. This ought to help readers keep track of the tremendous roster of Nordic crime writers, particularly new authors or those whose work is being translated into English for the first time.

Barbara has also started a companion blog, where you are hereby ordered to post comments frequently.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Norway Crime Fiction
Finnish Crime Fiction
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Scandinavia Crime Fiction