New publisher in the works

A new Finnish publisher announced its first three books just before the holidays. I had something to do with all of them, so I'm a bit obliged to say something about them, even though the books are in Finnish. The new publisher is called Putki Kustannus (never mind the translation, it doesn't make much sense) and it works only via Lulu. The books are print-on-demand, which is still a novelty in the Finnish book industry, but it's a bit cumbersome to make the books in Lulu, since they don't offer Finnish ISBN codes (or any ISBN codes for that matter), so they are a bit invisible and won't automatically be catalogued in the Finnish National Library system.

But on to the books! Remember my 12-hour novel I wrote some years ago? I thought initially I wouldn't publish the book, but when Jukka-Pekka Kervinen e-mailed me about his idea to publish pulp-styled literature in print-on-demand and asked for help, I thought immediately about my manusript. It fits here perfectly, and the story was actually better than I remembered. The book is called Älä soita sinivuokoille, Joe Novak, which translates roughly as "Don't Call the Coppers, Joe Novak" (Novak being the private eye hero of my one previous novella and various short stories).

I also put together a small anthology of crime and horror stories, some of which were previously published, mostly in my fanzines Isku and others. Some of the stories were previously unpublished, though, for example Harri István Mäki's wonderful story about Edgar Allan Poe's relationship with Annabel Lee. The book is called The Last Shot according to Tuomas Saloranta's sleazy story of a revenge falling over a porn dealer. The first line: "Start jerking off."

The third book is Petri Hirvonen's short story collection Kuolevan jumalan yö ("The Night of the Dying God" in English) that I put together from the stories I've published in various mags through years. There are some western stories, a pirate story with horror overtones, some eighties-style action, some revenge stories, all told with energy and a good eye for violent action. Petri is a little-known pulp writer who's done some Finnish Jerry Cotton stories and the FinnWest western series. Putki Kustannus is also putting out his novella Kalmankylväjä ("Deathsower" or some such) that takes place somewhere in the Central America. The body count is massive in just 100 pages. Both Petri's and my book have forewords or afterwords that explain what's going on.

There are other books coming out from Putki Kustannus: a criminous short story collection by Teemu Paarlahti, a collection of my Mikko Jarmo short stories that mix private eye genre with silly alternative history themes, a collection of flash fiction crime stories I ran in my mag, Ässä, and a collection of my reviews and articles on American hardboiled fiction. I've been also working on a small collection of obscure Finnish pulp short stories from the thirties and fourties, but there are some copyright problems I'll have to resolve. There's possibly also a western short story collection coming from Sami Myllymäki.

Here's more in Finnish on my other blog.

What Finnish crime writers should be translated?

I ran across a blog post over at Rap Sheet talking about Finnish crime writers who should be translated in English. Linda L. Richards, who wrote the post, mentioned Reijo Mäki who has just received the Vuoden Johtolanka (The Clue of the Year) prize from the Finnish Whodunit Society. Richards writes: "This recent win has likely (hopefully?) already put into motion the forces that will change that [Mäki being unknown in the US - JN]. Still, it seems at least a little inexplicable that we haven’t heard much about Mäki before, because he’s kind of a big deal in his home country. Eight of his nearly 30 novels have been adapted for the screen. Four of the resulting films have opened in Finnish theaters and another four are still to be released."

Mäki is indeed very popular in Finland and his popularity doesn't seem to be fading in the near future. His books are slightly parodic hardboiled private eye books that usually don't do well in the US or UK markets nowadays, and the large sociological and political questions, not to mention questions regarding to gender and minorities, that characterize most of Scandinavian crime fiction are largely missing from his work. The films based on his work have also been popular, but also very much criticized for being sloppy and clichéd. This is not to say someone shouldn't try translating them in English; maybe that would help some other writers break the barrier.

There are some Finnish crime writers, though, who really should be translated in English. Antti Tuomainen is breaking good in seemingly anywhere in Europe and the US, and I can heartily recommend his work: it's good, solid noir. I'm sure many who are into hardboiled crime might like Harri Nykänen's Ariel Kafka novel Nights of Awe out from Bitter Lemon Press (I haven't read it myself). Many seem to like Marko Kilpi's serious police novels, but I didn't like his first one, Jäätyneitä ruusuja ("Frozen Roses"), which I found deeply over-written and pretentious.

Here are some names for you, though. Mind you, I'm not interested in cozies or huge international thrillers. Both have their writers and their fans in Finland, though.

Tapani Bagge writes hardboiled action like no other writer in Finland. His long series of career criminals and sore losers of cold small towns of Finland is very good. Bagge (who's a personal friend of mine) is well-read in hardboiled crime and noir, and he sure knows how to spin the plot. He can also create memorable characters: they are touching, fragile and capable of violence at the same time. Bagge really cares for the people he writes about. Tapani also has a four-part series of historical crime, set in the 1930s and 1940s and the political mischief at that time, but I've only read the first in the series, so can't really comment on that. Tapani's been popular in Germany.

(As some of you might remember, I tried to translate Tapani's first crime novel Puhaltaja into English (with the tentative title The Jack), but it didn't work out so well in the end. Tapani's well-represented by his agent, though, so I don't mind.)

Marja-Liisa Heino is one of the most original Finnish crime writers, whose four books differ greatly from each other. I just finished her latest novel, called Astuit väärään autoon ("You Stepped into a Wrong Car"). It's an absurd Dostoyevskian play of guilt, written in prose that's both diffuse and clear at the same time. Lots of things go by unexplained. The story of a rapist who gets out from the prison and moves in with one of his victims (and makes renovations in the woman's house!) is pretty weird, but also very engaging. There's also some police procedural stuff, but I thought the parts with the rapist were better.

Of the other Finnish private eye writers than Reijo Mäki, Markku Ropponen might be an interesting one, but I'm not sure if his work translates well.

Many readers of this blog are into very dark and tough hardboiled fiction. They might want to try Juha Seppälä's Super Market. It was already published in 1991, but many of its pieces still feel relevant. Some of the more absurd stories set in the Finnish army might not work in English, but some of his violent ultra-short stories about criminals and other lowlife could very well resonate with someone who likes to read ThugLit or Flash Fiction Offensive. Seppälä's first novel, Hyppynaru ("The Skipping Rope", 1986) could also be seen as a non-genre crime novel. He's becoming more experimental these days, though, but his work still retains the darkness of his early work.

Harri V. Hietikko's first novel in years (he wrote a trilogy of supernatural private eye novels for a very small publisher in the 1990s), called Lausukaa Paranoid (the title is a joke that doesn't work in English), is, according to his own words, an update of Sergio Leone with Harley-Davidsons. I haven't read it as yet, but it seems interesting.

There are also some more marginal writers, some of which are more into horror and fantasy. Petri Salin's excellent Jim Thompson-esque short novel Toinen nainen ("The Other Woman", 2009) would work very well as an e-book. (Sadly Petri has made himself non-available for the time being.) Tuomas Saloranta is more a horror writer, but he can spin a mean crime tale any time he wants to. His horror stories, published mainly online and in anthologies, have a very, very dark edgy side to them, though they are also humorous at the same time.

Of the horror writers, I'm sure Juha-Pekka Koskinen and Marko Hautala would find audience translated in English. Koskinen has tried his hands also in crime writing, producing one good novel, called Eilispäivän sankarit ("The Heroes of Yesterday"), and also one book related to the Spanish Civil War and the political anxieties in Finland in the thirties and fourties. (I haven't read that one, though.) Koskinen's horror stories in my anthologies have been uniformly good.

Oh, by the way, here's something I've probably forgotten to post. It's a canon of Finnish noir fiction, posted in one of my Finnish-language blogs. I compiled it with the help of some of my friends, including Tapani and Antti. (I might be a bit biased saying good things about their work, but then again, this is my blog.)

Kjell Westö: Lang (A Finnish crime novel)

Well, not actually a crime novel per se, more like a mainstream novel with a crime in its center. Kjell Westö's (from the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland) Lang (2002) is a tale of a celebrity writer and talk-show host who gets dragged down into a strange ménage à trois with a young woman, who has a 6-year old boy, and the son's father, a young man with a criminal bent. Seems like the woman and her former lover are still engaged in a sadomasochistic relationship that ends up in a tragic killing.

Westö tackles many issues, ranging from the verbal abuse that the talk-show host engages upon his interviewees to the larger social abuse the rich engage upon the poor, and the society of the spectacle.  This is all quite interesting and the book has a pretty good narrative drive, but Westö's style is overwritten. This could've benefited of being 40-50 pages shorter, though the last 50 pages were very good.

I don't know if this is translated in English (or any other language the readers of this blog master), but it might work in other languages, as it's not a typically Finnish novel. The themes are pretty global and the narrative is full of urbanisms.

Edit: my friend Tapani Bagge says this novel has been translated in English, he remembers seeing a review of it in CrimeTime magazine. Anyone? 

New Finnish crime literature: Bagge, Rönkä, Kilpi

I was down with flu for almost two weeks. I'm still a bit ill, but I'm so behind my work I'll have to start doing something. The architecture book I've been writing for about two years (or at least seems like that already!) is seriously late from all the deadlines and I'm hating it big time.

Okay, I wasn't going to talk about that. I was going to mention three new Finnish crime novels I read while I was sick. One of the books was work-related as I wrote a review of it for a newspaper. 

The best of the three was my friend Tapani Bagge's Kasvot katuojassa (Face in the Gutter, out from CrimeTime), a novel of linked short stories and novellas. Fast-moving, touching at best, always on the side of the losers, at times pretty violent and often funny. Very fast read even though I wasn't quite sure why it had to be done as a novel and not as a collection of short stories. The story goes back and forth in time unnecessarily. (The cover for Tapani's book is done by Lasse Rantanen.)

Matti Rönkä's Väärän maan vainaja (Dead in a Wrong Country, Gummerus) is the new entry in Rönkä's series about Viktor Kärppä, the Russian ex-soldier working as a building contractor in Finland and helping out other Russians, dealing even a bit for the Russian mob. Mediumboiled, always on the side of the losers, usually well written, good descriptions and snapshots of the Russian way of life, but still a bit lukewarm. 

Marko Kilpi is one of the most revered crime writers working now in Finland. He was even nominated for the  prestigious Finlandia literature prize. I can't begin to understand why: his first novel Jäätyneitä ruusuja (Frozen Roses, 2007, reprinted now by his new publisher) is a clumsy and over-written piece of pretentious stuff trying to act as high literature. People say Kilpi has improved as a writer, I seriously hope this is the case. 

Tapani Maskula's novel Houkutuslintu

The legendary film critic from Turku and a personal friend, Tapani Maskula, is now also a novelist. His first novel, Houkutuslintu ("Decoy" might be a good translation), came out earlier today from Turbator for which I've edited lots of anthologies. Houkutuslintu is an old-fashioned romp through the town of Turku in the late thirties and early fourties, with smugglers, loose women and speak-easies. I've yet to read the book, but I'm sure it's enjoyable.

The cover is great. It's by Anssi Rauhala, who also did the cover for my Sherlock Holmes anthology. (Sorry for the bad photo, just took it with my cell phone.)

Review of Jarkko Sipilä's book

Steve Lewis provides a guest blogger's review of Jarkko Sipilä's novel Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall here. More on the book here and here. (The later link leads to another review.)

Review of Jarkko Sipilä's Against the Wall

Someone called Toby commented on my months old post on Finnish writer Jarkko Sipilä's Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall, the English translation of his cop novel. Here's his review he wrote some time ago - it's not entirely positive, but still merits a look, as he's clearly knowledgeable and mentions having read one of David Peace's crime novels. (I haven't read Sipilä's book myself, so I can't really comment.)

More on Jarkko Sipilä's Helsinki Homicide

I got around to ask Jarkko Sipilä some questions on his newly-published book Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall. It seems getting the book out in English has taken some activism.

"Only very few Finnish books are getting translated in English", says Sipilä. "That's a problem that doesn't seem to worry Finnish publishers very much, and we don't have many agents working here."

So Sipilä and his brother, who's living in the US and has been working in Wall Street, decided to put up their own publishing house getting Finnish crime novels out in English for the American audience. "If no one else does it, we'll do it by ourselves", says Sipilä. The new publisher is called Ice Cold Crime, which brings to mind images of Scandinavian winter and snow.

Ice Cold Crime is publishing next another book by Sipilä, whose work is strictly rooted in the police procedural and its hardboiled subgenre. Then they'll probably publish something by Harri Nykänen. Nykänen is slightly better known in the US, since the Raid TV series made from his novels was shown in some cable channels there.

The big problem promoting Finnish literature in English-speaking countries is that almost no one speaks Finnish. There's also the problem of getting good translations. Says Sipilä: "We asked for four translation samples and chose the best of them. We also had a proper copy editor who worked with the text and a professional graphic artist to design the books."

"This is of course taking the first steps, making connections, but we'll see how this works out", says Sipilä.

I might be making more posts on this topic to help Sipilä out. And I'd really like to see people spreading the word. If someone's interested in obtaining a review copy, I'm sure you can contact Sipilä through me, in a comment or an e-mail.

Edit: seems like your best bet to get the book is via Amazon, at least for now. For the Finnish readers, the book will be available in bookstores in Finland.

Jarkko Sipilä's crime novel out in the US

Just noticed that Jarkko Sipilä, one of the foremost Finnish crime writers (and one of the most hardboiled), has a crime novel out in the US. The book is called Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall and its original title was Vasten seinää (the English translation is literal). It was published in 2008. The book received the Finnish Whodunnit Society's annual award, Johtolanka (Clue), which must've been the trigger for the American deal.

I'll try to get some more details from Sipilä himself.

In the meantime, have a happy Midsummer's Eve!

Edit: Here's some more info!

Jukka's cover for Hard Case Crime found a user

Some months ago I wrote about my friend Jukka Murtosaari's attempt to break through in the US and send cover illustrations to Hard Case Crime's Charles Ardai. The illos were turned down, but now one of them has been published.

The eye-patch lady now illustrates Helena Numminen's short story collection Murhaavasti/Murderingly that had its launch party earlier today. The publisher is Turbator for whom Jukka has done lots of covers and for which I've edited some anthologies and collections. Helena's book collects 14 bitter and hard-hitting crime stories no ordinary publisher would touch. Two of the stories were originally published in my crime fiction fanzine, Isku, namely "Molotovin cocktail" (which is very urgent in its depiction of hospitalized old women) and "Vekan pedissä". Helena seems to have rewritten the ending of the latter. Highly recommended.

There were also two other books launched today: publisher Harri Kumpulainen's own collection of absurdist short-shorts and composer Matti Rag Paananen's collection of poetry that he wrote while in Africa. Both have already been reviewed here.

Jukka still has a great cover available - anyone? (Check the link to my earlier post.)

Jorma Napola's one-off private eye novel from 1962

Private eye novels have never been big in Finland. I don't really know why, but I have some thoughts: private eye is a product of a culture that relies much on individuals and their right to do something, to correct things, to have a vengeance. Finland is pretty much a culture that relies on authorities, on the fact that someone else takes care of things. (Of course there are regions which resemble more Wild West, but more on them later. Perhaps.)

Private eyes in Finnish literature can be counted with one man's fingers. Reijo Mäki has Vares, Markku Ropponen has Otto Kuhala, Ari Paulow has Jesse Hackman.. and there you go. Tapani Bagge's Onni Syrjänen is not really a private eye. In the seventies there were some writers who dabbled in the genre, like Matti Kokkonen and Totti Karpela, but their legacy has not endured. (One distinctive point in Finnish P.I. novels is that they pretty much go for the parody of the genre, especially Reijo Mäki's Vares, or at least are very jokey.)

One shiny example of a good Finnish private eye novel is Ruuvikierre by Jorma Napola. The Finnish title might translate as "The Big Screw". I read the novel for the first time just recently, when I was suffering a bad case of stomach complaint.

The private eye hero in the novel is one Jaakko Piira, who mentions couple of times having been in the war and having fought first against the Soviets, then against the Germans. Piira is your typical private eye, tired, lonely, suffering from melancholy, could be an alcoholic. The book starts with Piira complaining that he's got no job. All he has is him and a spider weaving its web in a corner of his office. He gets a job, though - a nice and coy young lady asks him to check upon a man who was living in her and her aunt's house as a tenant and is now disappeared. Piira promises to look into the matter and finds himself getting woven up in a web of deceits and lies and blackmail. There are couple of murders and some cops who don't really like Piira.

The book was first published in 1962 and the author, who worked as an art critic and journalist, had won the first prize in a crime novel contest a big publisher called WSOY had put up. Napola won also the second prize, but more on that later.

Ruuvikierre has its share of clichés, but if you happen to enjoy these particular clichés, you'll enjoy Ruuvikierre too. There's a strong noirish tone in the book and the style is fittingly hardboiled. Napola also does a nice job getting those American clichés smuggled in Finnish settings, even though at times I found Piira's wisecracking a bit too un-Finnish. You know, we're not really accustomed to people yapping all the time. There are some implausibilities in the plot and I didn't really believe in the scene that took place in a rehab center, but all in all I really much liked this book. As for the foreign readers, suffice it to say that this could've been published in English and no one would've noticed any difference.

Timo Kukkola, who's written the history of Finnish crime literature, doesn't give much weight to Napola's novel and says only that it's a weak attempt to bring the American influence in Finland. He seems to think that hardboiled literature is only what Chandler and maybe Hammett had to offer and says - at some other point - that the fourties should be left alone. Yet he writes page after page about some locked room mysteries and mansion murders.

Kukkola seems to have some joy when he gets to mention that Napola didn't write another novel. He didn't know it all. A small paperback publisher called Viihdeviikarit (and the man behind it, Kari Lindgren, also the man behind Book Studio and now Book Man) put out in 1981 a novel called Ministeri on murhattu/A Minister Has Been Murdered - by Jorma Napola. The back cover told that Napola had won the second prize in the crime novel contest mentioned above, but WSOY didn't want to publish two novels by the same writer (I don't know why they didn't use a pseudonym), so it had remained unpublished for almost 20 years and Viihdeviikarit had dug it up. I remember reading the cheap paperback for at least two times in my teens.

I didn't remember much of it, though, when I decided to reread it after having finished Ruuvikierre. The books don't really resemble each other, except that both have men of principle in the lead. Neither will back down. The murder in the latter book seems impossible at first, but Napola doesn't give much thought to that and focuses more on bitter human intercourse. The book ends in noirish tones of despair and bitterness, even though it's really nowhere as bleak as Ruuvikierre. It's not as humorous either and the plot is not as intriguing as in Ruuvikierre. Ministeri on murhattu seems also to have some tones of the Maigret novels by Simenon.

Jorma Napola's both books deserve rereading and perhaps Ruuvikierre should be reprinted again as an affordable paperback.

Old and ugly Finnish crime paperback

Here's a rather inept cover of a Finnish paperback, a very obscure Pankkiryosto Harmassa/Bank Robbery in Harma (an area in the Western coast of Finland), perhaps written by one Aarre Gronlund, who published men's and true crime magazines from the late fifties on. This one is from 1973. (Sorry, the scandic letters don't show when I use this Picasa program.)