Ruumiin kulttuuri 4/2009: English Summary Risto Isomäki, the man on the cover of this issue, is an author, science writer and environmental activist. Apart from non-fiction, he has written much praised ecological thrillers (The Sands of Sarasvati et al.) with suspenseful plots, dealing with the grave issues facing mankind, threats to the environment, terrorism and the climate change. Having begun his prose production in science fiction Isomäki says he switched over to thrillers partly because “science fiction suffers from super-inflation”. “In the books people dart about in galaxies and invent techniques which will most likely never be feasible and which no one can take for real,” Isomäki criticizes. He is currently working on several novels, among them sequels to two separate thriller series (“Risto Isomäki and Horizons of the Future”). Sweden was the theme country of the Helsinki Book Fair this autumn, so there was also an impressive presence of Swedish crime writers. One of the five guests was Inger Frimansson who has twice received the award for Sweden’s best crime novel of the year, in 1998 and 2005. Author of psychological crime novels, she says she often grows attached to the characters she creates. “Characters of my earlier books keep cropping up in new stories. I recycle,” Frimansson says (“Recyclist of Weird Types and Stories”). Peter Leonard, son of “Detroit Dickens” Elmore Leonard, published his energetic debut novel Quiver last year at the ripe age of 56. This year it was followed by book number two, and in September Peter Leonard signed a package deal on three more novels. In October he made a brief visit to Finland when Quiver came out in translation. After working nearly 30 years in an advertising agency of which he was part-owner, Peter Leonard started as a full-time author last summer. “I haven’t given a thought to the advertising business since. I write full-time, and it’s incredible how much I enjoy it. I can give my time to my new novel, I don’t have to think of how to sell Volkswagens,” Leonard smiles (“Second-Generation Crime Writer”). Last year, Norwegian novelist and screen writer Nikolaj Frobenius published his novel Jeg skal vise dere frykten (I Will Show You Fear) which follows the tragic twists of Edgar Allan Poe’s life. On his visit to Finland in October Frobenius told us the book required a great deal of background work and research. The author travelled to the locations in Virginia and New York and explored in newspaper and photo libraries, studying the crimes and crime reporting of the time. “However, the news items within my text came from my imagination. Reading archived newspapers I discovered that the style was very different from what it is today. The reporting was dramatic and literary,” Frobenius says (“Nikolaj Frobenius in the Footsteps of Poe and Dostoyevsky”). Patricia Cornwell’s renowned heroine Kay Scarpetta lives in a merciless world where one cannot trust anyone. “Anyone can be an abuser, an unfeeling psychopath. One had better carry a handgun even when going to the toilet,” Veikko Lindroos observes in his article about Cornwell’s books. He is not impressed by Scarpetta, published last year and now out in Finnish; he finds it follows a stale old recipe. “But the early books in the series are undeniably heavy bones, some of the best in the history of crime writing,” Lindroos gives praise (“Kay Scarpetta Makes the Dead Talk”). Poet, essayist, biographer, musician, teacher, translator, editor, writer of short stories and, of course, a brilliant crime author. James Sallis is all that and more, and finally we can read him in Finnish: the first translation is his excellent crime novel Drive. In his extensive article Antti Tuomainen describes Sallis’s oeuvre: “His work as a writer ranges over four decades, and if we look for a common denominator for the work, perhaps we could say that he is always searching for something new.” (“A Poet at Heart, a Crime Writer by Vocation”) Other items Risto Saarinen, Professor of Ecumenics at University of Helsinki, presents his ten favourite crime novels (“My Top Ten”). Tammi Publishers is investing in local crime fiction for youth: the company has launched a series called Black Lane in which seven books have come out at a fast pace (“Behind the Black Tape”). Nemo, another publishing house, has released a Finnish translation of Ritta Jacobsson’s Aphrodite and Death, the winner of the prize for the best youth crime novel in Sweden in 2006 (“Ritta Jacobsson – Swedish-Finnish Quality Suspense”). Inspector Sakari Koskinen, the main character of Seppo Jokinen’s police novels, has stepped on the stage in Tampere, at the illustrious TTT-Theatre. Members of the Whodunnit Society turned up in force to see the play and to meet author Jokinen and director Tiina Puumalainen (“Inspector Koskinen Impresses on Stage”). September saw a valuable addition to the meagre body of research on Finnish crime fiction when Paula Arvas published her doctoral thesis The Iron and the Cross Spider. Its subject is the series of detective novels by Vilho Helanen, popular in the 1940s and 50s, and their upright protagonist, lawyer Kaarlo Rauta (Iron) (“Iron, a Man Respectable in All Respects”). Movies and DVDs: among others, Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, Kari Skogland’s Belfast thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking, and Bertrand Tavernier’s In the Electric Mist, based on James Lee Burke’s novel. Sorting out the autumn backlog: 53 titles are reviewed (Capital Sentences). Translated by Liisa Koskinen

Ruumiin kulttuuri 4/2009