Sofas, secrets and a snowbound road to trouble…
Helsinki, 1982. Recently divorced postal worker Ilmari Nieminen has promised his daughter a piano for Christmas, but with six days to go – and no money – he’s desperate.
A last-minute job offers a solution: transport a valuable antique sofa to Kilpisjärvi, the northernmost town in Finland.
With the sofa secured in the back of his van, Ilmari stops at a gas station, and an old friend turns up, offering to fix his faulty wipers, on the condition that he tags along. Soon after, a persistent Saab 96 appears in the rearview mirror. And then a bright-yellow Lada.
That’s when Ilmari realises that he is transporting something truly special.
And that’s when Ilmari realises he might be in serious trouble…
A darkly funny and unexpectedly moving thriller about friendship, love and death – The Winter Job tears through the frozen landscape of northern Finland in a beat-up van with bad steering, worse timing, and everything to lose…
It is such a pleasure to be hosting the blog tour for The Winter Job by Antti Tuomainen today. Many thanks to Orenda Books and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me and for my advance copy of the novel.
Antti Tuomainen takes us back to 1982 in The Winter Job for a thriller which revels in its dark humour and ludicrous characters but ultimately proves to be a surprisingly heartwarming tale that's perfect for the festive season.
The perennial reports of parents desperately fighting over the last must-have toy of the year in the shop have nothing on the lengths Ilmari Nieminen has to go to after he promises his daughter a piano for Christmas. He manages to persuade the salesman in the instrument store to hold the piano for him until Christmas Eve but with just six days to go and no money, the odds seem stacked against Helena's wish coming true. It's no surprise then, that he should accept the offer of a job to transport an antique sofa to Kilpisjärvi, the northernmost town in Finland but right from the start, it becomes obvious that this isn't going to be a straightforward delivery. After picking the sofa up from a complete chancer of a dealer, he quickly runs into a problem when the old Ford Thames that has been assigned to him doesn't have functioning windscreen wipers. It looks as though his journey will already face a delay until a voice offers to help. The good Samaritan on the forecourt turns out to be Antero Kuikka, a childhood friend of Ilmari's and his timely intervention comes only with the condition that he join him on the trip north Ilmari and Antero have unfinished business following an incident years ago but nevertheless, they set off with the sofa in the back and a sports bag filled with music cassettes in the front.
Shortly after Ilmari departs, deranged hardman Otto Puolanka arrives at the antique dealer's property and soon shows just how unpredictably violent he can be. He is undoubtedly a very dangerous man but this is an Antti Tuomainen novel and so the violence is often almost Tom-and-Jerry cartoon-like. Otto is by turns brutal, hilarious and pathetic; his mood swings are lethal, he listens to Eye of the Tiger on repeat and he just seems to keeps coming, regardless of the pain he endures as he doggedly pursues the sofa – but a scene where he believes he has found a friend is oddly poignant.
Otto isn't the only person on the tail of Ilmari and Antero as they are also being followed by Erkki and Anneli, a pair of Communists in an egg-yolk yellow Lada. Erkki is the senior of the two but his recent behaviour – not least his love of the TV show, Dallas and J.R. Ewing in particular – has led to Anneli growing increasingly suspicious that he may not be as dedicated to the cause as he should be. Nevertheless, they soon make their presence felt and so Ilmari begins to question just what is so desirable about this sofa.
After he makes his shocking discovery, this compulsively absurdist caper becomes even more ridiculously action-packed as Ilmari and Antero face near-misses, breathtaking chases and a deeply unpleasant search in the snow. They make a good team and yet their history means there's an element of doubt between them which adds a further layer of intrigue to the chaotic proceedings. Can Ilmari really trust Antero? Meanwhile, Anneli's doubts about Erkki underlines how trust is one of the main themes of The Winter Job.
In Ilmari Nieminen, Antti Tuomainen has another of the everyman characters he so excels at creating to explore the human condition, through a skilful combination of humour and pathos. Loneliness and the need for connection is the most important topic examined in The Winter Job and there are some touching scenes amidst the wild chases and snowy mayhem. The atmospheric descriptions of the inclement weather conditions as the characters engage in their frenetic Wacky Race from Helsinki to Kilpisjärvi adds further drama to proceedings and as always, Antti Tuomainen's vivid prose is a sheer delight throughout. A word of thanks here too, of course, for David Hackston's work in translating the novel.
With its pitch-perfect timing, gripping plot, first-rate characterisation and a nostalgic early 80s' soundtrack, I loved this brilliantly funny cat-and-mouse thriller. The Winter Job is a standalone novel but I'm sure I won't be the only reader hoping Antti Tuomainen might be persuaded to write another series. Very highly recommended!
Follow the blog tour, details are below.
The Winter Job is published by Orenda Books and can be ordered directly from their website. Further purchasing links can be found here.
About the Author
Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he 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 and has been released as a TV series, 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 and The Beaver Theory, will soon be a major motion picture starring Steve Carell for Amazon Studios.
About the Translator
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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