Little Siberia (2018) by Antti Tuomainen
Good Reads meta-data is 278 pages, rated by 3.67 by 2,278 litizens.
Genre: Krimi.
DNA: Finland.
Verdict: Deep and dark in the forest primeval.
Tagline: Vroom!
Much more serious than any of his I have read before. Deep and dark in the deep and dark north woods 20 miles from the 1944 imposed border with Russia.
Hero is a pastor (though which church and who employs him is left in the clouds, but probably Lutheran) in a small community among the lakes and forests. He tries his best, though like Miguel Unamuno’s Father Emmanuel he has lost the vocation. A few years earlier he volunteered for service as a pastor with a contingent of Finnish soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. That experience marked him.
First he had to extend the compulsory military service training he had done earlier with additional training in hand-to-hand combat and desert survival. In the field he went along on patrols and saw things that, well, if God let this happen, then he had no use for that God. He also got shot with some long term consequences.
But he does not advertise any of this, not even to his new wife. Most the villagers take him at face value, a well meaning but insipid fellow. Nice enough, but not a buddy among the manly elk hunters, loggers, fishermen, woodsmen, trappers, and the other hardy souls who endure 20 hours of darkness 6 months of the year.
Then comes the meteor! Yep. Act of God or what? From heaven or the devil’s spawn? Or both?
There are some exhilarating scenes of F1 driving that set the tone. Most of the early material plays into the plot, though the plot is, to this reader, overdone, as is the cynical ending. But I did finish it and I am glad I did.
I never did get what happened to the gym owner or why such an elaborate set up was needed.