SALON

Friday, Dec 21, 2012 9:15 AM UTC

US crime author has dark take on Finnish society

By

Topics: From the Wires,

US crime author has dark take on Finnish societySONY DSC(Credit: AP)

HELSINKI (AP) — In the doorway of a Helsinki bar on a snowy December afternoon, American author James Thompson is being offered a pair of Russian army night vision goggles that may — or may not — have fallen off the back of a truck.

The author, a Kentucky native who’s lived in Finland for the past 15 years, has recently signed a new deal with publisher Putnam that puts his Inspector Kari Vaara series in U.S. bookstores through 2015.

Thompson buys the goggles and the vendor shuffles off into the snow. It’s the sort of deal in the sort of neighborhood that Vaara would approve of, and it’s somewhat apropos that the Hilarious Pike bar is a regular haunt of both the writer and the fictional cop.

Thompson’s style is on the dark end of the “Nordic Noir” spectrum. The genre — with its stark and often violent police procedurals — has proved wildly successful for publishers and filmmakers alike.

The marquee names have come from Sweden — think Stieg Larsson’s “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” or Henning Mankell’s “Wallander” series — but Norway’s Jo Nesbo and Iceland’s Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardottir have also made their mark with international readers.

Thompson stands out from that crowd by writing in English and telling Vaara’s gritty narrative in the first person.

“My entire vision of writing books set in Finland was to demonstrate what the world is like moment to moment in the mind of an average Finnish man,” Thompson says over cups of coffee. “The best way to do that was to narrow that lens of his thoughts.”

The three books published so far — “Snow Angels,” ”Lucifer’s Tears,” and “Helsinki White” — chart Vaara’s journey from small-town Lapland sheriff to big-city Helsinki detective, black-ops thug and finally master criminal.

Along the way Vaara acquires sidekicks that include a fetishist policeman and an attempted double murderer and his team manages to fit in a brisk trade in blackmail, illegal guns and drug deals while solving crimes.

Thompson’s secondary characters are certainly larger than life, though it’s hard to imagine the plethora of brazenly corrupt government ministers, sex perverts and drug cabals inhabiting a country like Finland, which is regularly ranked at the top of clean government indices.

Yet Finland itself shares the character spotlight throughout the series. Its quirky off-beat foibles mean Vaara can’t be transplanted to another location without sacrificing Finnish concepts, landscapes and people.

“All I’m doing is writing traditional Finnish stories,” says Thompson, 48. “This is the land of sad songs and what I write is simply repeating the themes that have dominated Finnish literature and music forever.”

Married to a Finnish woman, Thompson moved to the Nordic country after serving in the U.S. military and working in construction. He held jobs as a bouncer and bartender before studying for a master’s degree at Helsinki University and becoming a writer.

Finns may find his themes familiar, but as a foreigner, Thompson can also broach subjects that are uncomfortable or mildly taboo in Finnish society: Immigration, Nazi collaboration during World War II, race relations or right-wing politics.

“I discuss things that other people don’t discuss or don’t see,” he says.

That has brought him some online flak from Finland’s political right. It probably doesn’t help that some of his most despicable villains seem to be thinly veiled caricatures of well-known politicians or businessmen.

Jukka Petaja, a novelist and literary critic at the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, said many Finns don’t agree with the image of Finland that Thompson portrays.

“But it doesn’t prevent readers from enjoying books by him,” Petaja said. “Having some distance from Finland, Jim Thompson can also see some phenomenon even clearer than many Finns.”

Thompson insists he doesn’t write “to send political or social messages” but like Finland’s national poet Johan Runeberg, his books are filled with characters and plots that do just that.

Even Thompson’s leading man Vaara, whose name can be translated as “Stone Danger,” seems to be a nod to Runeberg’s 19th-century protagonists who had heroic yet simple surnames that supposedly reflected their honesty and valor.

Thompson’s characters side with the common man. The crimes of everyman characters are dismissed with a sentence or two of forgiving prose: alcoholism leading to child abuse, casual spousal violence, multiple fatal stabbings. The crimes of the rich, the powerful and the politically connected, however, are treated more seriously, and Vaara’s disdain for Finland’s elite is often barely disguised.

The pub’s heavily tattooed barman dutifully refills Thompson’s coffee, but there’s also a bottle of vodka in the freezer with the author’s name on it. Not surprisingly, Vaara likes to chase his beers with a shot of vodka too.

“There’s a part of the author in every character,” Thompson says.

___

Follow David Mac Dougall on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/davidmacdougall

More By David Mac Dougall.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 1 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
From global warming to fluoride: Why do people deny science? An interesting question.
49 points50 points | 61 comments
vote
Developers evict historic women’s shelter to build luxury hotel - The 104-yr-old Anna Louise Inn has ended its 2-year legal battle with a Fortune 500 company & will now move. Many view the victory of the insurance company over a community touchstone as a major blow to the city.
33 points34 points | 2 comments
vote
Anonymous rallies behind Kaitlyn Hunt
29 points30 points | 35 comments
vote
The GOP Is the 'Party of Crybabies' for Demanding No One Criticize Their Policies or Donors
22 points23 points | comment
vote
Illinois' fracking and coal rush is a national crisis: Illinois and its Mississippi River banks are becoming another ground zero in the war over climate change.
20 points21 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations