Category: Krimi

Timothy Hallinan, A Nail Through the Heart (2007)

Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 1,842 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Thai.

Verdict: tour de force debut!

Tagline: Bangkok’s mean streets.

He has lived there long enough to speak Thaiglish and, more importantly, to learn the Bangkok glide and now aspires to sweat less.  Yes he is a European ex-pat living cheap in Thailand, writing travel guides for the, ahem, adventurous rough travellers.  He is tough and cynical, he thinks. Then he meets several people who give him masterclasses in being tough and cynical.  

While I found both subject matters at issue repellant [guess], the reader’s nose is not rubbed into it, and I flipped some pages, but the ride is a mile-a-minute with some unusual (to this jaded hack) characters and unexpected twists and turns.  

Bangkok itself is the major character, its human tides and lulls, its uneasy relationship with the eponymous river, its scorching days and hotter nights, its sex tourists, its Buddhist rectitude and venal corruption, its crowded streets and desolate corners, the human flotsam and jetsam that have beached there ….from typhoons , revolutions, wars, tsunamis, crimes, and more. The spine and title page but not the front cover have the subtitle: A Novel of Bangkok. 

There are corrupt cops, another who quotes English philosophers, a reluctant and apologetic murderer, a murderous murderess war criminal, a sadist worse than the war criminal, a loving niece, two street kids, Go-Go dancer 47, a righteous seeker of vengeance, all in a rich mélange of characters. There are two plots that interweave but do not combine.  Deft.  There is no Great Attractor that brings everything together.  

The aside on the woeful influence of Nescafé appealed to me because I saw the same thing in Greece, where its convenience displaced some of the best coffee in the world with brown glug. 

It just about reads itself, and that is partly due to the very short chapters that speed along with energy on the page.

First in a series: Much as I liked this one I am not going to read another one soon.  The repellent subject matters leave a long and unpleasant aftertaste. I have had this one on my shelf for a decade or more, the pages have yellowed, before I got around to it.  When I got the first Kindle I switched to reading mainly on it, and only lately have gone back to my stash of paper books. 

The Bangkok glide is to walk slowly and barely lift your feet leaning a few degrees forward as you almost slide/glide forward: Energy conservation in the perishing climate.  Hero can work on that. As for sweating less, well maybe that is covered in the later volume of the series.  

The Man Who Died (2017) by Antti Tuomainen 

Good Reads meta-data is rated 3.82 by 4,917 litizens 

Genre:  krimi.

DNA: Finland

Verdict: TMI.

Tagline: DOA.

He went to the doctor with a headache and the doctor diagnosed something far worse. (See my review of the Brazilian short Instant Doctor elsewhere on the blog.)  Hero finds that he has been irreparably poisoned and there is so much internal organ damage he has but weeks, perhaps days, to live.  He sets out to find out who has killed him.  

He suspects his unfaithful wife or her toy boy and ….  Then his business rivals look like prospects.  A satisfying array of red herrings are tested before he gets to the least likely candidate.  Bingo!  

This is a trope used before. The most vivid example I can recall at the moment is the film Dead on Arrival (1949).

Tarquin Hall, The Case of the Elusive Bombay Duck (2025).

Good Reads meta-data is 244 pages rated 4.50 by 84 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: India.

Verdict: Amusing culture clash.  

Tagline: Pass the aloo, and hold the murderer.  

Vish Puri, the world’s greatest Indian detective returns to the field after a five-year sabbatical. But he is playing away without the aid of the Handbrake, Tubelight, Flush, Missy and the rest of his agency and on unfamiliar turf.  Although West Ham has a lot of India about it, and that comforts him.  

Why would Puri leave India and all its food behind?  He has been invited to London to receive an award and of course his wife and mother demand to go along.  Not ideal but he has no choice but to agree.  Then a representative of a Minister who could make his life miserable suborns him into an investigation while in London. Unofficial, hush-hush, secret.  As if. This fact he tries to keep from the distaff side but his mother, as always, see through him.  

While his original thought was to see sights and sites, with wife and mother along, he knows they will do the rounds of relatives distant, tenuous, and friends of friends and more with little chance to go to the British Museum, Big Ben, or the War Rooms that he wanted to see. 

The more Puri tries to trim his sails, the more deeply entangled he becomes.  As usual Mummy-ji sets off on her own mission, while assisting him, against his will.  A new ingredient is a London born and bred nephew who acts, unwillingly at first, as Puri’s guide and translator.  When he discover his fat, old uncle from Indian is on the trail of a major villain, he warms to the chase. Nicely done this clash of cultures and generations.Then there is the closing explanation of how Mummy-ji was able to get a passport and visa in record time.  Nice that, too.  

‘Come to India and learn to speak proper English,’ Puri tells his street smart nephew. 

A lot of characters to keep track of and, of course, plenty of food for the big man.  I could not fathom why the hairy villain wazzed against the wall, and so drew attention to himself.

Note for the cognoscenti, ‘Bombay Duck’ is….  Look it up and be informed.  

6th in series I have read.

The Healer (2010) by Antti Tuomainen.

Good Reads meta-data is 224 pages rated 3.16 by 2073 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Finland. Species: Helsinki.

Verdict: Unbalanced. 

Tagline: The worst has come.

There is a rich context of Helsinki, some of which resonates with memories of our visit there – the central station guarded by those giants, Stockman’s, the rock church, the bears at the door of museum with the 1919 broken glass in the door. 

The hero is sympathetic.  Moreover, the police are not cardboard fools. 

This world has a oneway descent into a state of nature. There is mercifully no preaching about this catastrophe; it just is. Instead we have a study of how different people react to that fact.  Some go into denial. Others welcome it, until it hurts them. A few find profit in it.  

Though the authority of the state has all but disappeared, the police are still rule-bound and paper money in euros retains value.  Further, for a penurious poet Hero seems to have a good supply of that paper money.  

Hamid appears, saves hero’s life, starts a backstory, and then disappears from the text. Poof! Uh?  Likewise, hard to fathom was the fact that poet seems to have known nothing about his wife or his two best friends.  Instead far too much leans on the plotter’s crutch: the all enveloping conspiracy.  

Had this been the first Antti Tuomainen book I read, I would not have read any more.  Very Nordic noir formulaic: the protagonist tortured by his backstory, gruesome violence, a bleak environment, insidious corruption by anyone with more than two euros to rub together, and a downbeat ending.  Same old, same old.

Beaver Theory (2022) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 269 pages rated 3.92 by 1015 litizens.

Genre: krimi. 

DNA: Finland. 

Verdict: Hoot and Holler three-peat.

Tagline:   The end. 

Actuary is happy, though he is wanted for murder, has been assaulted, is going broke, has been threatened with death, sees his park disintegrating, and faces a revolt from the park staff. A few troubles to be sure. However on the bright side, he now has a bended family which he brackets from these aforementioned purely professional concerns of staying out jail, staying alive, and staying in business. 

Who knew running an adventure park could be so…adventurous?  

Henri and his slide rule, will they prevail again, despite the odds, or because of them?  I read on to find out.  

This was the end of the trilogy.  Most of the loose ends were tied up but not all. The troublesome brother disappeared, and while I liked the shambling police officer, I wondered why he did not react to the dead and then alive brother.  Specifically, as to this title I missed an explanation of who funded the rival park, and what the black mail was about. Maybe that was just me.  

The Moose Paradox (2021) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 300 pages rated 3.76 by 1,916 litizens.  

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: A two-peat: Hoot and Holler!

Tagline: He’s back!  

Actuary’s brother is undead, and has learned nothing from the near death experience. Bad, very bad, for many reasons which Actuary enumerates…at length.  Brother is a one-man wrecking crew, filled with good intentions that generate catastrophes, which he duly blames on the nearest innocent bystander.  He would seem well qualified for senior management, and he is just that in his own freely given opinion.  

Actuary is also so in love, he cannot calculate the cost-benefits of anything, starting with being in love. He speaks without thinking!  He makes schoolboy blunders in arithmetic!  He takes the bus when he meant to go by train. He turns the wrong way when he exits the bus and gets lost. He is not himself.  But then who is he?  Indeed, where is he?  On the wrong bus.  

And, ‘What about the moose?’ A moose in need is a friend indeed. Right, Rocky!

***

Does not compute: the police show no interest in Brother’s return from the dead.  I also found Johanna’s capitulation to Brother did not jibe with her no nonsense persona from the Rabbit Factor.  

The Rabbit Factor (2020) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 301 pages, rated 3.78 by 5,053 litizens.

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: A hoot and a holler! (The highest rating.)

Tagline: The Rabbit did it, twice.

Actuary is McKinsey-managed out of his 15-year position after being tortured by an open plan office with weekly ‘soft flow’ training sessions to release his inner creativity.  The open plan office makes it impossible to concentrate on all the possibilities and assign them values, and the soft-flow training induces nausea in his hyper-rational mind.  He has no inner creativity, nor does he want any.  

At age 39 for the first time in his life, he is unemployed.  Well, no problem, as long as people die there will be work for actuaries.  He thought. He was half right.  People still die, and more to come, well, to go.  He was half wrong because the schools are churning out more mathematicians than anyone knows what to do with.  Employers don’t want experienced actuaries who are set in his ways, they want young and strong employees desperate for their first job.  Having never spent a Euro in vain, Actuary sits tight on his savings and waits, and waits, and waits with Schopenhauer to keep him company.  Hmm.

Then things get worse.  His seldom-seen brother dies. Oh, well, he will do the duties that need to be done in a cost-efficient way.  It is then that he discovers he now owns his brother’s adventure park, and also his debts, both white and black. Then there is the rabbit.

The ride is slow and unsure, and then wild and unpredictable. Despite the odds, which he has carefully calculated, Actuary discovers things about the park, people, himself, and life.  His reaction to art and the artist are charming, if life threatening.  I will never smell a cinnamon bun again without flinching.  

The managementese interspersed throughout alone is worth the cover price. A close second are the musings of Schopenhauer — in both incarnations — that are interspersed in the text.  But then there are Actuary’s efforts to reduce his decisions to Gaussian equations!  

Loose ends remain. Johanna runs the kitchen with an iron hand in an iron glove and never wastes anything. That combination made me wonder what she did with freezer man.  

This is the third title I have read from this author, and I am very glad I did. The first was so-so, but I liked the north woods setting and finished it.  Another was more diverting and I finished that, too, but this is the cake-taker. No, not the cinnamon bun-taker.  No way! I have my eye on its two mammalian sequels.  Stay tuned for further updates. 

Palm Beach, Finland (2017) by Antti Tuomainen 

Good Reads meta-data is 332 pages rated 3.66 by litizens. 

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: Loved it. 

Tagline: Goofy did it!

It is all in the title. An enterprising entrepreneur, enthused by an MBA to think big and bold outside the box (aka reality), opens a resort on the Baltic Coast of Finland. He has invested in cabanas, floats, sailboards, tanning mirrors, sand pails, outsized towels, surfboards, pedal boats, sunbrellas, banana chairs, floppy hats, the whole Waikiki beach shebang. However, banks do not lend outside the box, so he borrows the money outside the box of legality.  The debt collectors cometh.

She works there as a life saver,  never mind that few can swim in the Baltic Sea…and survive without wearing two wet suits even in high summer. Beach resorts must have lifeguards. Having inherited her father’s cottage nearby and jobs are few, lifeguard it is for her, while she sets about renovating the house. Then one day she came home from work and to find a deadman in her open doorway.  Who was he? Why was he there?  What happened to him? Will there be more trouble? WTF?  

It makes no sense to her, and so she gets on with her life.  The local plods are at a loss and so in the time-honoured tradition of real life, they blame the victim, no not him, her. They begin surveillance, not to protect her from another incursion, but to implicate her in the crime. To add to the fun, they call her in for questioning time and again hoping to catch her in a contradiction. All this pointless activity is noticed at the National Crime Agency which sends in an uncover agent to sort things out.

While Undercover is chatting her up in a bar, her garden shed explodes. Ditto WTF!  Undercover is pretty sure she had nothing to do with this second event, but the local plod are sure she did….  Another touch of realism when the cops work against each other rather than the krims.

I enjoyed the trip through the north woods, and the portrayal of the Laurel and Hardy villains.  But, mystery remains, I never did grok why Anton was there in the first place.  Maybe I blinked. 

Edogawa Ranpo, Gold Mask (1930).

Good Reads meta-data is 240 pages, rated 3.38 by 168 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Japan.

Verdict: A Nō pastiche with added Gaulic.  (Get it?)

Tagline:  Arsène did it

He’s here. He’s there. He’s everywhere. Gold Mask is supervillain. The amazing he does immediately. The impossible takes no longer. Acrobatics. Ventriloquism. Legerdemain. Sleights of hand. Plans made years in advance. He learned a lot from Fantômas, all 32 volumes. 

He’s altogether too bad to be true as he runs rampant in Tokyo. He is Arsène Lupin of 24 novels.

Comes complete with footnotes to Leblanc stories.

The dialogue put me in mind of silent movie inter-title cards.

The feline cognoscenti say it is not his best work.  

The book was recommended by Snowy the cat who is usually a more reliable source than Good Reads reviews. 

The Burning Stones (2023) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 251 pages, rated 3.56 by 231 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Finland

Verdict: A light touch.

Tagline: The forest primeval. 

When a sauna is maxed with an occupant who cannot get out, this victim watches as the stove slowly gets hotter and hotter with no water on the coals, and…kaboom.  Victim Number One is well done.  

Turns out he was in contention for the CEO job at the very company that made that exploding stove. Two things follow: a crisis in selling those stoves and suspicion falls on the next in line for the CEO position: herself.  Moreover, there is circumstantial evidence associating her with the crime scene conveniently left for the police, unaccustomed to investigating such a scene, to find. They find it and congratulate themselves on their genius.  

The race is on between the police making a case against her, did I mention that the second in line is 50-year sales rep, a woman, no? Well she is. She competes with the police to find the real killer, since it is impossible, so Aristotle said, to prove conclusively something that did not happen, namely her guilt.  Go ahead, try proving Aristotle didn’t say that!

Being a novice she hits a few snags, takes a few wrong turns, fishes for the usual red herrings, and implicates herself unwittingly in a second murder of a member of the board of the sauna stove manufacturer. Saunas are dangerous!

…

What I like is the setting of village Finland 50k from Helsinki in heavily wooded lake country in the last days of summer. The days are Finnish hot (18-20C) and the nights chilly.  The slanting sun brings out the colour in the early fall foliage.  All of that is nicely done.  There is also a lot about how a sauna works.  My only experience of a sauna was in grad school where one was available in the men’s locker room and I used it after weekly Wednesday night volleyball games a few times.

What I found confusing was the proper names for places (lakes, villages, resorts, people) with all those double vowels, diacritics, and polysyllabic built words. In the luxury of hindsight I also questioned the speed with which our Heroine jumped to conclusions.  A 50-year old experienced sales rep would surely realise there are twists and turns in dealing with people, even though she was anxious to exonerate herself.  There was also a distracting subplot involving her wayward husband whose whole life centred around F1 racing, she thought.  While I found some of the detail of that fixation interesting it wore me out.