Cold Trail by Jarkko Sipila (2007. Gummerus (Finnish). 2013. Ice Cold Crime (English). ISBN978-0-9824449-8-6)
This is the fourth Sipila novel that I’ve had the pleasure to read and review for New World Finn. Previously, I took a “stab” (pun intended) at commenting on Helsinki Homicide, Nothing But the Truth, and Against the Wall. Of the three Suhonen/Takamäki police procedurals that I’ve had the pleasure to read, my favorite, with this latest effort included in the mix, remains Nothing But The Truth.
There’s really no mystery to the story that Sipila proposes here. Timo Repo, a Finnish ordinary man, slips his prison escort at his father’s funeral while serving a life sentence for killing his wife. Because of the prison guard’s ineptitude, the Violent Crimes Unit (VCU) led by Lieutenant Kari Takamäki is called upon to trail and recover the prisoner. Propelled by Sergeant Anna Joustsamo’s curiosity as to why a man who’d nearly served out his sentence would suddenly escape custody, the VCU spins into action, relying upon Joustsamo’s computer expertise and the street smarts of undercover cop Suhonen to not only track Repo but also dig into the crime that sent Timo Repo to prison.
As is the case with all Takamäki/Suhonen yarns, Jarkko Sipila gives his readers a detailed look at how the police machinery in Finland works, complete with a “under the curtain” exposé of internal politics, departmental jealousy, and the finer points of police work in a modern Scandinavian urban center. The author draws upon years of crime reporting to support this fictional tale and, as in past efforts, paints a believable and compelling rendition of a plausible scenario. Of particular interest to this reviewer (who happens to be a judge) is the fact that one of the minor characters caught up in the dragnet is Aarno Fredberg, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Finland, who, at some point in time, once heard an appeal of Repo’s case.
There’s much to applaud in this effort. Terse writing. Believable characters. Accurate dialog. But unlike Nothing But the Truth, which contained excellent character revelation (centered around the iconic Norse scalawag, Suhonen) and in-depth exposition of the motivations behind the actions of Sipila’s fictional creations, this effort continues the more genre driven minimalism of Sipila’s other works.
Consider this comment from my 2011 review of Nothing But the Truth:
(W)hile Sipila’s later works have been well written and concise, the sort of tight writing one wants in a beach read (which most crime novels tend to be), they lacked the revelation of character that, for me, sets a good book apart from its competition. After reading Nothing but the Truth this past weekend, I now know that Jarkko Sipila cares about the people who populate the Helsinki of his imagination. And in this reviewer’s humble opinion, that’s a huge plus.
The cast of characters in this earlier installment of the “Helsinki Homicide” series includes some of the same folks found in Sipila’s later work, including Kari Takamäki, (a Detective Lieutenant in the Helsinki Violent Crimes Unit) and Suhonen (an aging, hockey playing undercover detective in the same unit). Sipila clearly has a fondness for Suhonen’s lone-wolf personality: The author gives the shadowy detective center stage. But the writing (unlike the two other Sipila books I’ve read) doesn’t suffer from too much action and not enough humanity: Here, Jarkko Sipila gives us a full-blooded Suhonen, a character with a complete history and personality.
(Full review available under the “Reviews” tab or by using the search function above.)
I recognize that few police procedurals make the leap that I suggested in my review of Nothing But the Truth and that, in many ways, readers of genre fiction expect, and in fact, demand a certain formula be applied by the author to a new and imaginative plot. Familiarity, in the world of genre fiction, doesn’t breed contempt: it breeds sales. Despite this commercial need to bow to script, Jarkko Sipila doesn’t leave us completely uneducated with respect to the lives and specifics of the characters in this book. There’s a nice little subplot here regarding Takamäki’s teenage son and a bike accident that allows us to peek into the domestic life of the lieutenant and his family However, this diversion is only a brief, and in some ways, wholly unrelated pause in an otherwise plot-driven tale.
In addition, though the details of the police work depicted in this story ring true, to my thinking Sipila ends up painting on a canvas with too many colors. What do I mean? Given the Takamäki subplot, it seems that, had the author concentrated on Takamäki as the focus of the story rather than shifting between essentially three primary police protagonists (Takamäki, Suhonen, and Joustsamo) this book would be on the level of Nothing But the Truth. Such concentration of characterization is what made Nothing such a great read: We learned to respect, fear, and empathize with the Suhonen character. Had Mr. Sipila employed his considerable writing skills in creating a similar individual portrait in Cold Trail, the book would have equaled, or perhaps surpassed, Nothing But the Truth.
Still, for readers who enjoy Scandinavian crime novels and are looking for a quick beach or rainy-day-at-the cottage read, this is a good book to pick up and escape in.
4 stars out of 5.
(This review originally appeared in the most recent issue of New World Finn Newspaper. If you are Finnish, or wished you were, you can subscribe to this great little periodical about art, culture, politics, and history at http://www.newworldfinn.com/.)
