Helsinki Noir, edited by James Thompson (2014)

As a big crime fiction / noir-y stuff fan, I'm pretty excited about the extensive regionally-based "Noir" series, part of which is the book Helsinki Noir, edited by James Thompson (2014), which I recently finished. Each book consists of a series of short stories that take place in (and are usually by authors from) a specific region. In this case, the Helsinki area in Finland. (As an aside, I recently bought a copy of Lone Star Noir and I'm really excited about some Texas-based crime stories. More on that later.)

I don't know much about Finland except for what I've seen through the movies of Aki Kaurismaki which bring to mind lots of drinking, cold ice and snow, general depression, and a seriously dark sense of humor. The stories in the book pretty much all back that up, although some of them travel to a ritzy side of Helsinki that Kaurismaki doesn't really use in his films.

To be honest, some of these stories were a little rough even for me -- particularly the ones that included some sexual violence. Although there was generally some kind of revenge / divine retribution, being in a narrative with a really horrible character can get a little old. The best stories were those that relied on a solidly written detective character (particularly Leena Lehtolainen's "Kiss of Santa" and Jarkko Sipila's "Silent Night." [Also, Finnish names are really weird, guys.] A few of the stories were originally written in English, but most were translated from Finnish for this book. The editor notes in his preface that Finnish authors don't usually see a lot of crossover appeal because there is something unusual about Finland that just doesn't translate to other cultures. I could definitely see a little bit of that here, but that oddness and untranslatability often added to the creepy noir feeling of the stories. 

[Note: I received a review copy of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group.]