Ruumiin kulttuuri 3/2009: English Summary Mid-September in Helsinki, The Finnish Whodunnit Society celebrated its 25 years of existence. The guest of honour, directly from Venice, was crime author Donna Leon whose Guido Brunetti novels have been tremendously successful the world over. Leon says she has found it easy to step into Brunetti’s boots. ”It’s harder for a male writer to build a female character. A woman’s life happens more in the wings, behind the scene, so a man may not be aware of what goes on there,” she puts it to her interviewer Tiina Torppa (”Delicious Donna”). According to Leon, Suffer the Little Children, released in Finnish this year, grew out of a news item: the police had come in the middle of the night to take an illegally adopted infant away from the family. ”The subject picks me. It can be something in a newspaper or something someone says”, Leon explains. In honour of our quarter-century anniversary we asked Finland’s Minister of Culture and Sport, Mr. Stefan Wallin, to list his ten favourite crime books. Wallin says that in a good crime novel he is interested in ”surprises, a sufficiently fast tempo, and the writer’s ability to mix historical facts and pure fiction.” (”My Top Ten”) Pentti Kirstilä has been at the cutting edge of Finnish crime writing for more than 30 years. He is an intelligent, at times sarcastic, narrator, well versed in the tradition. In his books he has used a variety of narrative techniques and structures, he masters the sub-genres from the puzzle mystery to the hard-boiled to the thriller and psychological suspense. Kirstilä has twice received the Clew of the Year award, for his novels Sinivalkoiset jäähyväiset (Blue-and-White Farewell) (1986) and Imelda (1992). Kirstilä’s best-known character Police Sergeant Lauri Hanhivaara, working first in Tampere and later on in Helsinki, has been resting a few years, but Kirstilä is now planning to put him back to work. In recent years he has also written three mysteries together with his wife Anja Angel, under the pseudonym Ursula Auer. But no more: ”They were fun to start with, but then it turned into hard work. The books sold as badly as typical books of poetry. Not much of an incentive to continue,” Kirstilä tells us in Heikki Ollikainen’s interview (”Two-Time Clew-Winner Pentti Kirstilä”). What do you get when you make a mixture of a merciless hit man, romantic thoughts and the recent European past? These ingredients are combined by British writer Kevin Wignall in his political thriller Who Is Conrad Hirst?. The author visited Helsinki early this summer when the Finnish translation was published. With four novels now out, Wignall can be said to be interested in writing about evil – or, rather, about good people doing evil things. His characters are driven to shocking deeds, yet there are in the stories some signs of humaneness and a chance for them to repent. Another important theme is how and to what extent past incidents and traumas define us. ”This goes for everything we do, whether it’s new friends or human relationships. All the time we walk backward to the future,” Wignall says to his interviewer Janne Mäkelä (”Tragedy and Action in Europe”). Tapani Bagge is known for his fast-paced crime novels located in the contemporary underworld of his home town Hämeenlinna. Now he has stepped on new ground and into the 1930s: he has written Valkoinen hehku (White Heat), a historical crime story with the plot centering on an attempt to murder the then Minister of Internal Affairs Urho Kekkonen who was later Finland’s President for more than 25 years. The book’s title comes from Raoul Walsh’s classic film. In his essay ”How White Heat Was Born” Bagge tells us how it all happened. Thomas H. Cook’s dark crime novels delve into major themes, such as hushed-up mortal deeds of the past, the depth of evil, the unmasking and the revelation of the truth. Antti Tuomainen’s article is a combination of an analysis of Cook’s oeuvre and an e-mail interview. ”I have always thought that one of the duties of literature is to deal with morality, with what is the right thing to do,” says Edgar-winner Cook. He mentions Hemingway and Faulkner as his teachers of style: from Hemingway he learnt how to write precisely, and from Faulkner ”how to make the text sing”. (”Thomas H. Cook and Heart of Darkness”) Other items End of July saw the centenary of birth Chester Himes, the black master of the crime novel. Asko Alanen writes about Himes’s books and his life which did not lack dark and tragic periods (”The Books and Times of Chester Himes”). Journalist and script writer Juha Nevalainen (1921–1988) was the man behind many of the gems of the Finnish crime film in the 50s and 60s, among others ”The Price of One Night”, Song of Warsaw and The Scarlet Dove. Tapani Bagge has studied the oeuvre of this prolific and award-winning writer (”Film Noir the Finnish Way”). Reports from conferences: Skandinaviska Kriminalsällskapets (SKS) AGM and conference in Iceland in May (”On Arctic Crime Waves in the Ultima Thule”), a crime lit panel in Marseille in June (”Crime Writers in Marseille”) and the annual Finnish Kouvola weekend, where the theme was working life in crime novels (“Murderous Work in Kouvola”). An episode of the highly popular German television series Tatort was shot this summer in eastern Finland and Helsinki (”Borowski’s Tango in Ilomantsi”). Capital Sentences: under scrutiny, nearly 50 new crime books mainly from the summer season. Translated by Liisa Koskinen

Ruumiin kulttuuri 3/2009