The Healer by Antti Tuomainen translated by Lola Rogers, February 2013, 246 pages, Harvill Secker, ISBN: 1846555876
Antti Tuomainen's THE HEALER is set in an
unspecified but future time when climate change has meant
environmental and economic disaster. Those who can afford to flee
further north than Helsinki, the setting of THE HEALER, and
inhabitants of southern Europe are shifting northwards. Increased
rain and sea levels have left countless people homeless and made many
parts of Helsinki uninhabitable.
The protagonist of THE HEALER is Tapani, a poet
who hasn't sold anything for several years. His wife Johanna is a
journalist, trying to cover important issues rather that the
lightweight celebrity news that a depressed readership craves. And
then she goes missing.
Tapani knows that his wife has been covering 'The
Healer' case - that of a serial killer who has been targeting wealthy
businesspeople and their families - people who could have done
something about climate change if they hadn't been so greedy, in the
killer's opinion.
Tapani sets off to find his wife and is aided in
his quest unexpectedly by the policeman in charge of The Healer case
- a man who is a police officer to his core despite the dismal
situation the world finds itself in.
Tapani's investigations takes the reader on a tour
of Helsinki, interspersed with flashbacks to happier times with his
wife, as he uncovers secrets and finds that he may not know those
closest to him as well as he thought.
THE HEALER, like several books I've reviewed
recently is full of atmosphere, albeit a gloomy rain-sodden one,
slightly at the expense of the action. The plot, tied up refreshingly
in less than 250 pages, could be said to be very well constructed or,
equally, heavily laden with coincidences but it works in the main.
Although called 'The Healer', the book is not about him, it is about
a man trying to find his wife: a very noir, amateur private detective
story. There are some interesting secondary characters: the policeman
mentioned above and an immigrant taxi-driver who chauffeurs Tapani
around.
Readers of Scandinavian crime fiction will
probably by now feel at home in Stockholm's Gamla Stan or on Oslo's
Sofies gate and the slowly increasing number of Finnish crime novels
available in translation may mean that Helsinki becomes an equally
familiar place. At the moment though, the futuristic Helsinki in the
THE HEALER seemed to me a very alien place, it almost could be on a
different planet.
THE HEALER is an unusual crime novel and the
ethereal tone is reminiscent of Jan Costin Wagner's Kimmo Joentaa
series, also set in Finland.
Read another review of
THE HEALER.
High-flying financiers are being murdered and it is beginning to appear like the work of a serial killer. CID inspector Jenny Hultin puts together a team of top detectives to crack the case swiftly before there are more deaths and a national panic. One of the team, Paul Hjelm, is saved from a disciplinary hearing for shooting a hostage taker when he said he was unarmed. Together with his new colleagues he finds himself working 24 hours a day in shifts to find the killer quickly. They are 'A Unit' and their pursuit of the Fat Cat Killer will expose tensions within the newly-formed group and put some of them in fear of their lives. And what do the financier killings have to do with the Estonian mafia and the discovery of a dead robber in an empty bank with a dart in his eye?
