Tuomainen The Burning Stones

The nail-bitingly tense, darkly funny new thriller from the author of The Man Who Died
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916788-33-6
Verlag: Orenda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

A top saleswoman at a Finnish sauna company must outwit the police and a murderer when her boss is found dead ... in a sauna. A darkly funny, tense new thriller from 'The funniest writer in Europe' (The Times) `The best comic crime novel you'll read this year´ Abir Mukherjee `Suspense is uppermost in this adroit mix of psychological thriller, whodunnit and middle-aged rom-com. Comedy is still pervasive ... the novel's glorious gallery of weirdos´ Sunday Times Book of the Month `Finnish author Tuomainen has a talent for creating offbeat characters ... [a] tense, pacy novel, laced with the author's trademark laconic humour´ Guardian Book of the Month `It may seem hard to find good comic crime-writers, but clearly we haven't been looking in Finland ... simultaneously thrilling and evocative of the mundanity of life, and also very funny indeed´ Telegraph ______ Love, murder, middle age, and a sauna to die for... A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered ... in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death? The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen - top salesperson and the victim's successor at Steam Devil. And as if hitting middle-age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren't enough, Anni realizes that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all - before it's too late... From the international bestselling author of Little Siberia and The Rabbit Factor, comes a darkly funny, delightfully tense new thriller that showcases humanity at its most bare - in middle age, suspected of murder and, of course, in a sauna... _____ `Showcases Antti's trademark deadpan humour and crime plots focused on intriguingly quirky individuals. An utter delight´ Vaseem Khan `Just what you want from Antti Tuomainen, the brilliant moulding of apparent mundanity into a which-way-now thrill ride, with humour drier than a desert snake's belly´ Ian Moore `The funniest writer in Europe´ The Times `Hilarious, beautifully penned and startlingly inventive. No other writer can come up with more ways to kill you in a sauna, and The Burning Stones cements Tuomainen's position as the king of the humorous crime caper´ Abir Mukherjee `Laconic, thrilling and warmly human - hugely enjoyable´ Christopher Brookmyre `Antti turns the heat up with this wryly comic thriller. You'll sweat along with the characters!´ Douglas Skelton `You don't expect to laugh when you're reading about terrible crimes, but that's what you'll do when you pick up one of Tuomainen's decidedly quirky thrillers´ New York Times `Finland's greatest export´ M.J. Arlidge `A refreshing change from the decidedly gloomier crime fiction for which Scandinavia is known´ Publishers Weekly `Right up there with the best´ Times Literary Supplement Praise for Antti Tuomainen `Delightfully funny´ Guardian `Deftly plotted, poignant and perceptive in its wry reflections on mortality and very funny´ Irish Times `Fresh and witty´ Chris Ewan `A thrilling and hilarious read´ Liz Nugent `Charming, funny and clever´ Literary Review

Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when we made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, Tuomainen's third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. In 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the 'King of Helsinki Noir' when Dark as My Heart was published. With a piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) was an immense success, with The Times calling Tuomainen 'the funniest writer in Europe', and Little Siberia (2019) was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. The Rabbit Factor, the prequel to The Moose Paradox, will soon be a major motion picture starring Steve Carell for Amazon Studios.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tuomainen, Antti

Weitere Mitwirkende

Hackston, David

Leseproben

1

I steered the car into the lay-by and stepped out.

It was a warm morning, August still in full bloom. There were only a few scattered strips of cloud in the sky, gentle white brushstrokes far away along the horizon; another sweltering day to add to the week and a half of sweltering days that had just passed. I had driven a hundred kilometres, and there were about another three until I arrived at my destination. I was well ahead of time, and there was a good reason why.

Sixty-four hand-crafted wood-burning sauna stoves. It was a lot. Perhaps not in the grand scheme of things, perhaps not for factories that churn out mass-produced stoves, but for us, and for me, this order was a big one; it could even be make-or-break. Above all, it felt like a reward, because I’d been laying the groundwork for this deal since early spring.

I took a deep breath. The forest still smelt of summer, of blossoms, greenery and life.

I had plenty of experience of situations just like this one, and I don’t think I’d misread the signals; I was certain that today we would finally seal the deal and place that order.

I was fifty-three years old, and I’d been selling handmade sauna stoves for twenty years. I’d met this potential customer several times, and as far as I could tell we understood each other’s needs. I was intimately acquainted with every stage of the manufacturing and retail process, right from the original stove design to the bliss of bathing in the steam, from the initial brochures to closing the deal. Sometimes it felt as though I understood stoves better than anything else in my life.

I’d sold more stoves than anyone else in the history of Steam Devil, with the exception of the company’s founder, Erkki ‘The Stove King’ Ruusula. I’d been able to match any and all offers made by our competitors – on both price and quality – and had gained people’s trust one week, one phone call, one email at a time. And when, two weeks ago, I’d made another short phone call and asked if I could come and visit the site again, I was welcomed in the warmest of terms.

I watched a group of birds fly from one dark-green edge of the forest to the other. They crossed the marshlands quickly and effortlessly; they didn’t have to worry about getting themselves stuck in the boggy ground. It didn’t seem like a bad way of approaching my own situation.

I filled my lungs with the forest’s fragrance one last time and felt better than I had done in a long while.

I returned to the car and started driving.

‘Anni Korpinen, the master saleswoman, in the flesh,’ said the man as soon as we were within speaking distance. His name was Lauri Kahavuori. He was the founder and owner of Kaha Cabins Ltd, a semi-detached chalet conglomerate – as he called his medium-sized business. I was about to respond to his greeting when he continued: ‘Quite the situation you’ve got going on.’

Of course, I knew what he was referring to, and his curiosity was understandable, but the utterance still took me by surprise. As did his expression, his body language. They had somehow changed since our last meeting a week and a half ago. Of course, a lot had happened at Puhtijärvi since then.

‘It was a terrible shock,’ I admitted, candidly, and I was reminded that one and a half weeks after Ilmo Räty’s tragic death I still had no more information on the matter than what the staff at Steam Devil had heard the day after the fire: a lakeside sauna had burned down, the fire brigade had discovered Ilmo inside, and the police had reason to believe that the fire had been started deliberately.

‘The police are looking into it,’ I said eventually. ‘And, naturally, we’re helping in any way we can.’

I hoped the subject was now dealt with and that we could move on. All the speculation and rumination on the matter had begun to feel voyeuristic, and as the days passed, it felt futile too.

‘Quite,’ said Kahavuori. ‘I’m helping too.’ His eyes seemed to sharpen.

I didn’t understand what he meant. ‘So…’ I began, waited a moment, then continued. ‘Obviously, I’m here to get things moving with those stoves and—’

‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘Always a good idea to get things moving.’

Kahavuori turned, the car-park gravel crunching beneath his shoes. We climbed up a small hill and passed a row of incomplete semi-detached chalets. The whole hillside was dotted with them. Thirty-two semi-detached chalets in total, each unit to be fitted with its very own sauna. And that meant sixty-four stoves.

Kahavuori came to a stop about halfway along the cluster of chalets, where a stretch of the terrain had been levelled flat.

‘The sun is shining,’ he said. ‘These things almost build themselves, you know. Everything’s going great.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. So, we have—’

‘And yet,’ he said, and raised his hand, moving it in a horizontal line from left to right, from right to left, as though trying to sculpt the air in front of him. ‘There are shadows, over there, over there, over there.’

Throughout the spring and summer months, Kahavuori had turned out to be a tough negotiator. But I could never have imagined there would come a time when I genuinely had no idea what we were talking about.

‘Of course, it’s none of my business,’ he added, ‘but I have a few thoughts on the matter.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, still unsure what he was referring to. ‘That’s good to know.’

I remained silent for a moment, then decided to give it another shot. ‘In our last counteroffer, we agreed that—’

‘Seeing as we’re talking about stoves, what say we talk in the sauna?’

This obviously wasn’t an invitation to bathe with him. He meant the sauna facilities of the unfinished semi-detached chalet next to us.

The chalet was still nothing but a skeleton. The floors were nothing but bare, unsmoothed concrete. Our footsteps scuffed through the dim interior. I followed Kahavuori across the living room, into the utility room then through the changing room into the sauna. And with that, the glare of the summer’s day was gone. Inside, the sauna was almost dark, and the sounds of construction work, which only a moment earlier had surrounded us, were now muffled echoes. Naturally, this sauna was only a sauna on paper; the wood panelling was missing, as was the stove, not to mention the benches. But nonetheless, here we were in the sauna, just the two of us, far away from the world outside.

‘Jeffrey Dahmer,’ Kahavuori almost whispered. ‘Ted Bundy.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I mean, for instance,’ he said, and his voice was different now, coarser, closer to me. ‘Someone who seems just like anybody else, roaming about the village of Puhtijärvi. Of course, those are extreme examples. Our guy wouldn’t have to dismember his victims, keep their body parts in the fridge and turn them into dinner, or help the lonely by day only to turn into a bloodthirsty killer by night.’

Kahavuori’s expression was expectant, and I couldn’t see any other option but to answer him.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I suppose not.’

‘But the principle is the same,’ he continued in that gravelly voice, ‘because we know how many of them start by lighting fires. It’s not so much the exception as the rule. And we know how many of them were the guy next door that everybody liked. Then afterwards everybody says, oh I’d never have thought Ed or Dennis or Asko from down the road could do a thing like that. What if this is, you know, a serial killer who’s just getting started on his … series? I mean, it’s always a possibility. That’s all I’m trying to say.’

It was clear that Kahavuori’s thoughts were focussed on something other than the sauna stoves. There was an intensity in his angular features, something I’d never seen before. His sharp nose looked more like a tool than part of a human face.

‘It could be me,’ he said quietly.

We looked each other in the eyes. He had turned his whole body to face me and was standing very close. There were several walls between us and the late-summer’s day outside. I could hear neither Kahavuori’s breath nor my own. I didn’t think it particularly likely that he was about to kill me and then eat me, though I did worry that we were straying dangerously far from the topic of the stoves. But I didn’t know what else I could do but engage with the discussion he had started, and moreover, do so on the wavelength he had chosen.

‘Anything is possible,’ I said eventually, in the gravelliest voice I could muster.

Kahavuori’s expression brightened. ‘That’s what I...