Nordic Crime Fiction Wave Could Grab Finland

When I started writing fiction, it wasn't a sure fact that I'd start writing crime novels. I surely had an interest in that genre, but there were more. So far my published works have included two crime novels, literary short stories circulating around the themes of love, death, sorrow and life altogether, and imaginative and somehow gentle stories dealing with serious issues for children.

But I have to admit: I do have a strong interest in researching and writing about crime, diving into existential or slightly philosophical questions of life and death. As one of my true literary influences, Matti Yrjänä Joensuu once said in an interview, after his harsh experiences apparently in his childhood and then as a police investigator in Helsinki Police Arson Unit: "It doesn't really make you a humorist."

I don't know if I'm lucky, but writing about serious and melancholic issues don't wipe away my need to use and create humorous situations. Maybe more in the future.

It still doesn't come as a surprise that after being a passionate researcher of these dark themes, some of the feedback I used to get from my synopsis or writings from writing professionals were: "Why do all these have to include a murder?"

I've heard that same story from other people writing crime novels. The twists of plot always often ending up using a homicide. It's just a matter if the story has more to it. Other subplots including different themes. Subplots about personal matters of the protagonists. Depicting the era. Social commentary. Or pure criticism towards the society and the system of the country. Often shown especially in Nordic crime novels.

For me, in addition to certain Finnish writers, Swedes are the greatest. Wife-husband writer duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote together ten Beck novels in 1965-75. They are all of excellent quality. The fourth one in the series, The Laughing Policeman, being my definite favourite. Especially through the crime investigation plot, which is very intelligent, still realistic. All Beck novels starting from the first, Roseanna, ending up to the last one Terrorists, depict the changes in Swedish welfare society through crime.

As has done later on Henning Mankell. I've read Wallander novels written by Mankell and value them very high in the ranks. I still see Rolf Lassgård as Kurt Wallander, the first one of three actors playing Wallander in TV series, the first two Swedish, the last one English. The two other actors have been Krister Henriksson and Kenneth Branagh.

One of my favourite crime-themed novels, which comes close to The Laughing Policeman in plot intelligence is Hour of the Wolf (originally Carambole) by Håkan Nesser. The intelligence in the police work, the point of view through murderer's eyes are just about bull's eye when trying to find rewarding reading.

Most of these have quite laconic narrative even when sometimes fast-paced. They don't play much with language as Matti Yrjänä Joensuu does. His Harjunpää series is not only about how to solve a crime, but why the crime was committed. As Swedes do, his novels go deeper in the society, flaws of the justice and political system and how certain, not always bad people, ended up committing the crime. They are often victims of injustice in life themselves. Even fragile to the end.

Joensuu has that certain sing in the language which often is lacking from regular crime novels. Something that with its depth breaks the borders to other genres and general literary fiction. In his lifetime, Joensuu (1948-2011) managed to create his own believable world of melancholy, realistic life and people often surrounded by sadness, bitterness, despair, unfairness, lack of love. Wrapping it all up in a unique touching way. While there is a lot of misery and pessimism in his books, Harjunpää novels are the ones I often go back to when wanting to read the packages that have it all. The humane touch.

I haven't found many writings of this kind that wouldn't be categorized in or out of the crime literature genre. Even though crime is committed in certain novels, it doesn't have to mean it should be categorized in crime novels.

I recently saw Purge (Puhdistus) by awarded Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen categorized in crime fiction in certain Irish book shops. I'm not sure is this intentional to bring the sales up. Or was it more difficult to categorize the book here, since the knowledge of the novel winning the prestigious Finlandia Prize and the book's strong connections to the past of nearby Estonia don't mean that much here.

Or was it intentional to label it as Nordic Noir? Nordic crime novels are doing commercially very well also outside the Nordic countries. The works of Sjöwall-Wahlöö couple sold somewhat ten million copies even in their earlier times, mostly in Eastern Europe. Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser, Norwegian Jo Nesbø and the late Swedish Stieg Larsson have widened the success to the other parts of the world by selling tens of millions of copies.

Especially Sweden has produced more and more internationally successful crime writers such as Liza Marklund, Jan Guillou, Camilla Läckberg, Arne Dahl, Johan Theorin, Åke Edwardson, Anna Jansson, Åsa Larsson, Leif G.W. Persson, Karin Alvtegen, Inger Frimansson, Jens Lapidus, Mari Jungstedt, Norway bringing Anne Holt, Karin Fossum, Kjell Ola Dahl, Denmark Leif Davidsen  and Iceland Arnaldur Indriðason. There would be many great ones coming from Finland as well. Some, such as Leena Lehtolainen, Reijo Mäki and thrillerist Ilkka Remes are doing well in German-speaking world.

Opening the markets also in English-speaking region hasn't yet been done properly by Finns, but interesting writers such as Antti Tuomainen, whose acclaimed and awarded novel The Healer has recently been published in English, have the chance.
And I'm sure there would still be more writers, whose works haven't yet been translated to English, but would be worth reading.

Processing real life events, and reverse drama

I'm often very interested in stories, which have a connection to real life. I couldn't care less for C-level drama or true movie channels showing the lead Based on a true story. But if certain pieces of fiction in books, movies, TV or even theatre have some kind of believable, not-so-sugary and ambitiously processed connection to real events,  you might have reached me. Even more interesting it is, if the piece is based on someone's original psychological processing of a life situation.
Some months ago, I went to Gaiety Theater in Dublin to see Steel Magnolias (Mischa Barton was in it). I hadn't yet seen the 1988 film starring Julia Roberts, Shirley MacLaine etc. But after browsing theater show lists and Wikipedia, I bumped into the background story of it. Originally written as a play in early 1980s by Robert Harling.
I read that Robert had written the play to process his sorrow after the death of his younger sister Susan Harling Robinson, a diabetic.
As it is summarized in Wikipedia:
As her best friend and closest sibling, Harling found it very difficult to cope with her death. He was advised by many of his friends to write about his feelings as a coping method. It began as a short story and evolved into a full length play as Harling didn't feel that a short story adequately conveyed the complexity of the relationships and the emotions that existed within the characters. Harling felt it important to include the way the characters utilized humor and lighthearted conversations to assist them in coping with the seriousness of the underlying situations.
I had to see how it had come alive. Especially as a drama-comedy. I know people processing sad things might end up using extremely dark, even macabre humour. But somehow I had a feeling that this would be different. Lighthearted, having heart, with a bit of haunting voice towards the end. I knew how it would end even when I didn't.
I was pleased. I would've ended the story in a same way. It brought different kind of after taste. Sense of having had laughs, but also a little sadness. As if I had lost a friend.
Steel Magnolias made me think how much information we have about the play or a movie beforehand makes the watching experience different. We get this presumption when knowing the background story.
When seeing the awarded documentary film Senna, the whole watching is more intense as you know how the story will end. How the main character, Ayrton Senna himself, is nearing his death. How those small decisions made about certain safety measures by the race officials are now seen.
Sometimes this drama is reverse. Made in an innovative way. The conclusion is shown first, then certain developments leading to it only afterwards.
One decision made years ago was made in the popular TV series ER. Doctor Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) was written out of the series by developing him a brain cancer. Only after his death was announced, the full following episode dealt with Mark's last times before his death. As he did peaceful rollerblading in Hawaii, his condition getting worse, him dying later on in the episode. The whole intensity to that overly peaceful episode came from the knowledge of nearing death.
TV, theater, movies, books. They don't always need to be utterly intense with ever-continuing action sequences.
There are great ways to create interesting, different kind of drama with simple, but bit unusual decisions.

Where were you when...?

I remember exactly when I heard that two planes had hit the Twin Towers. I remember where I was when I heard US president Ronald Reagan had been shot, as well as Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
I remember late September night in 1994. I was studying in a small college outside Turku in Southwestern Finland. Hearing heavy helicopters going over the dorm towards the sea middle of the night. The next morning news told by my college room mate. He had heard from the radio that a ferry had sunk at the sea. I didn't believe it then and I still hear about it. Nowadays as a joke.
The ship was named MS Estonia. 852 people went down in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. That explained the helicopters.
Immortalized the  memory of us students gathering in the college lobby stunned silent watching the morning TV news. Looking at those shocking TV pictures from the sea. And recovered people being brought from the sea to Turku University Hospital just 20+ kilometers away. To that same hospital where my son would one day be born. Personal history in context of a larger historical picture.
September 11th, 2001 was probably one of the strangest days in my life. I was working as an Editor-in-chief in a local newspaper in Southwestern Finland. In that morning my boss collected me from my home. Me, him and our caricaturist drove to Helsinki. Spent nearly an hour strolling around the city center of Helsinki before moving on to Government Palace by the Senate Square, Prime Minister's office. We were there to hand him the caricaturist's newest book. I was there to take pictures, to write an interview of Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen. How he felt about political satire in books and on television. He had been depicted in one weekly TV satire as a caricature character.
Some hours later me and the caricaturist stayed in Helsinki as the boss left back. We met a colleague. Spent some time. Suddenly the colleague's mobile phone started beeping messages from news agencies. After the second message about the second plane hitting the tower we had to find a TV somewhere. Ended up in a lobby of a city center hotel where people were gathering together. Apparently security level had been raised also in Helsinki since the police cars were going around.
In the evening I took a bus back to Turku. Spent the time on the phone discussing with different people how the world wouldn't be the same after that day.
I remember that day. Those moments. Getting the messages. The feeling. I cannot imagine how the world changed to those people who were really involved in those events some way or living nearby where they happened.
Few days ago, my son started remembering similar events in his life. The big news. Where he had been when he had heard about Osama Bin Laden being killed among other events. It had apparently been at home, through morning news on TV.
The next generation might have different events staying in their minds. But I have a feeling the echo will be the same, no matter if the news will eventually be splashed on their face through social media or through an iPod. Real life story is a story no matter which way you get it.

Cheap Journey Down Memory Lane

I sometimes have this habit of spending time browsing Youtube and Wikipedia at the same time. Often listening to the songs from the 80's, when I grew up.
It's a nostalgic journey to my memories. Remembering the first week of March in 1986, when I was in seventh grade in school and we got our first cable/satellite TV with Sky Channel, Music Box and the local cable channel showing a wide range of oldie TV series such as Kojak, TJ Hooker, The Fall Guy...
The music brings back the memories of those moments in pictures, even scents. Sometimes it's even possible to remember the feeling of warm or cold air on the skin as it was back then.
I could easily spend several hours going through this music-information combination. When finding a good song, I might search the lyrics and if there's a story behind it available, I'll read it from Wikipedia or elsewhere. Sometimes I bump into stories I never even understood existed when I was a teenager.
Some of them are part of a dialogue between real people. Not necessarily the person performing the song, but the songwriters. The singer is just a megaphone for all that felt heartache, pain, hatred or other unprocessed feelings.
I never knew that Feargal Sharkey was one of those megaphones with his two consecutive hits A Good Heart and You Little Thief.
The first one was written by then only 19-year old Maria McKee about her relationship with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench. The second one was written as an answer or a payback by Tench about his relationship with McKee.
Sharkey ended up placing the songs next to each other on his debut album. It would be interesting to know how much commercial thinking this all had. Or was it done purely out of opportunity. Natural way, of course.
I don't mind. The songs are memorable. And the story, now after over quarter of a century, is still alive. For me freshly. Even when it doesn't have that mystery in it anymore.
As still has You're So Vain by Carly Simon, released in the end of 1972, my year of birth. According to Wikipedia, the song is a critical profile of a self-absorbed lover saying: "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." The subject's identity has long been the matter of speculation, suspects including a wide variety of celebrities from Warren Beatty to David Bowie, from James Taylor to David Geffen.

Artists are artists. They get their material from everywhere. It might be nabbed from real events, from own, friends' or neighbours' lives. The content might have been grabbed from imagination, stolen from the bum passing by, or from the vegetable salesman they've known for years. Or the real life events with some small piece of news from the newspaper. Sources of inspiration are endless.

For whatever it is; music, literature, movies, somehow all these speculations might boost the sales, or at least interest towards the song or the person behind it.

I'm just wondering what kind of feelings does it boost in the mind of a person who created that actual piece. Relief of having let it all out by writing or composing? Relief of telling all the world about the reality behind the scenes before? Feeling of vengeance? Feeling of love finally let out in public? Feeling of being an artist and getting attention? Feeling of being able to touch someone's heart? Someone, unknown, out there?
Feargal, Maria, Benmont... I don't care. But you got me. Even over quarter of a century later. Sometimes the pain in heart brings great results.
Feelings. Nothing more than feelings. But also nothing less.