I heard about my latest featured read through book blogger Marina Sofia. If you don’t know her blog, Finding Time to Write, I’d recommend checking it out. Not only does she read extremely widely and rapidly, but she writes exceptionally perceptively about books. Her site is a treasure trove for those keen to find compelling stories, often from beyond the anglophone sphere.

Browsing the blog a few weeks ago, a post mentioning Finnish writer Antti Tuomainen caught my eye. Marina Sofia had particularly enjoyed the crime writer’s recent forays into black comedy, she wrote. Indeed, his ability to uncover the humour in dark situations was something she was keen to emulate in her work.

Intrigued, I checked out Tuomainen’s back catalogue. Several of the titles piqued my interest, but in the end The Man Who Died, translated by David Hackston, snared me with a killer premise: on a visit to his doctor, 37-year-old mushroom entrepreneur Jaakko discovers that not only is he dying but that his death is the result of a long campaign of poisoning that will soon cause his organs to shut down. Determined to find his murderer before he is silenced forever, he embarks on an investigation into everyone and everything he thinks he knows.

Tuomainen writes in the acknowledgements that the novel marked a turning-point in his career when, after five very dark books, he felt the need to lighten the mood and set out to write something that would enable him to ‘laugh a bit’. He certainly didn’t hold back: brimming with bizarre twists and grotesque incidents, the novel is in many ways an unashamed farce. Credibility is quickly left far behind but that hardly matters – we are swept on by a lovely playfulness, almost as if, with each turn of the screw, we can see Tuomainen rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of what comic incident he can cook up next.

The comedy works at the sentence-level too. Sly jabs at pretensions and hypocrisy abound, and there are some deliciously absurd descriptions. We learn, for example, that Jaakko’s wife Taina’s meals ‘aren’t the kind in which a teaspoon of celery purée stares dejectedly across the plate at a solitary sprig of wheatgrass’, while one of the henchman of a business rival appears to have discovered a way to body-build his own head. The narrator also maintains a thrawn detachment from events – a function perhaps of his shock confrontation with his mortality – which enables him to step back and see the silly side even in extreme circumstances.

It’s no surprise to learn that Tuomainen was a copywriter before he turned his hand to fiction. There is a lovely clarity and precision to Hackston’s translation that points to the sort of economy of expression that often comes from being paid by the word. (British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie is the exception that proves the rule here – he cut his teeth coming up with phrases such as ‘naughty but nice’ and Aero’s ‘irresistibubble’ but his novels, while they are many things, certainly cannot be called concise!)

Nevertheless, this is not a perfect book (if such a thing exists). Clear and direct as it often is, the prose sometimes tends towards the bald and obvious. Tuomainen also seems to struggle a little with portraying physical movement – many of the more violent episodes are tricky to follow not simply because of their outlandish nature but because of the awkwardness with which they are described. Some of the justifications, transitions and resolutions are also a little convenient, cursory or abrupt, as though, in his impatience to get to the next reveal or belly laugh, Tuomainen cannot be bothered with boring authorial housework.

But who needs perfection when you can have fun, compulsion and plenty of surprises along the way? If you’re looking for an entertaining read to make the long winter evenings fly by, this is one for you.

The Man Who Died (Mies joka kuoli) by Antti Tuomainen, translated from the Finnish by David Hackston (Orenda, 2017)

Picture by Aleksey Gnilenkov on Flickr.com