PotsandPlots

Plant with: Crime, Comedy.

Grows into: Heartwarming tale about the importance of friends, family and self acceptance.

Rating 🌻🌻 – Vibrant Annual (Out of 3 – check here for rating description)

Review Copy sent to me by publisher, Orenda Books.

Out Now!  In hardback – Find it on bookshop.org (Affiliate Link)

Take one sofa. Head north.

There are plenty of winter jobs to do in the garden, though I am pleased I don’t have to go outside too often. I am certainly glad that in the run up to Christmas, I won’t have to take a antique sofa the length of the country in a vintage van.

This is what Imari Nieminen has to do in Antti Tuomainen’s latest novel, The Winter Job.

I’ve reviewed several of Tuomainen’s books on GeekDad in the past but this is my first on my own blog and the first book I’ve reviewed on PotsandPlots for UK publisher, Orenda Books. Orenda Books are an indie publisher with some great titles. If you read no further in this review, at least do yourself a favour and check out their list. You won’t regret it.

Antti Tuomainen writes well plotted crime novels set in Finland, with a satirical world view. His Rabbit Factor books follow a loveably logical actuary after he inherits an adventure park, that also comes with the unwanted attentions of the Helsinki underworld.

Organised crime in Finland returns in The Winter Job. The book is set in 1982, with Christmas on the horizon. Ilmari Nieminen wants to buy his daughter a piano for Christmas. The problem? His meagre salary, minus his alimony payments, leave him a long way short.

To fill this void, he takes on a delivery job. Carry an antique sofa the length of Finland, return on Christmas Eve with enough cash to buy the piano. Simple. What can go wrong?

Lots Can Go Wrong.

Anybody who as read an Antti Tuomainen before will know that almost anything can and will go wrong.

Ilmari quickly falls in with a old school friend, who appears, as if from nowhere to help him out of a bind. These two have ancient, history, and issues of trust will bubble up throughout the book.

Next, two shadowy factions have interest in the sofa and have sent agents to reclaim it. They’ll stop at nothing to claim the prize, yet have Tuomainen’s trademark hapless inevitability about them.

The sofa (and any secrets it might contain) are essentially a maguffin, for a journey of self-discovery. Tuomainen deftly captures the imperative a parent feels to make their child happy. The need to enusre that children don’t suffer because of the mistakes of others.

The Winter Job offers an examination of the psychological detritus that builds up from a lifetime of decisions. Good, bad and indifferent. The crushing sense of inevitablity about life leading you down a cul-de-sac, that you can see no way out of.

Tuomainen offers no easy answers, but he offers chinks of light. The importance of not letting your past define you. The idea that change is possible. The value of allowing friends and family into your life and letting them help you.

This is a novel that stresses the need for good communication and offers hope that severed relationships can be rebuilt, with some self-reflection and effort.

Sitting over the top of all this, is a light-hearted crime comedy. One that will make you laugh and deliver some surprising set-pieces. With The Winter Job, Tuomainen, once again delivers have feel-good crime caper that entertains, keeps you guessing, and makes you feel a little bit better about the rocky journey we call life.