Saunas, love and a ladleful of murder…
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…
My Review
Thanks to Anne for organising this blog to tour and to the Orenda Books gang for my copy of this book.
I enjoy Antti Tuomainen’s books. The humour is dark, the characters relatable, and the mysteries gripping. In The Burning Stones, Antti brings us a middle-aged sale woman, haunted by a terrible past event, and a useless husband. Anni is the best saleswoman at Steam Devil, a manufacturer of handmade sauna ovens. When two of her colleagues are murdered she becomes the main suspect. The senior constable hates her because her father shot an elk he was determined to shoot, and the evidence can be made to point in her direction, especially after rumours start that she was sleeping with the boss, or possibly one of the murder victims.
Anni is absolutely certain she didn’t kill her colleagues. She’s being set up and sets out to prove it. Eventually, a model Spitfire kit provides the solution and she sets off to trap the real killer. Over the course of the novel, she discovers her husband has been doing more that watching old Formula One videos, that sculptures can be deadly, and that old flames can burn bright again. Also, the boss has dementia.
I enjoyed the novel but the tension built so strongly as Anni faces interrogations and suspicions that I had to read the last couple of chapters to make sure she was going to get out of it safely, before I could continue on with the novel. The pettiness of small towns and companies is realistically depicted, down to the generational grudges, assigned parking, and the general manager who gatekeeps access to the boss.
The descriptions of the landscape and weather, and the joy of open water swimming, and saunas, are evocative. The way Tuomainen describes the way water feels is a familiar sensation to me, and Anni’s enjoyment of the sauna is described in very tactile ways. I have never wanted to visit Finland and swim in the lakes more. Although I’d hope to not get murdered, or be accused of murder if I did visit.
I spent an afternoon reading this book, about 3 hours (it’s only 230 pages long) and it was a good way to spend an August Saturday afternoon. But now I want to go swimming and use the sauna, and I can’t.
About the author
Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, his third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and shortlisted for the Glass Key Award.
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 and now a Finnish TV series. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) and Little Siberia (2019) have both been adapted for the screen, airing shortly, and also shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and winning the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. The international bestselling Rabbit Factor trilogy is filming now for Amazon Studios, starring Steve Carell. Antti lives in Helsinki with his wife.
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