Gunnar Staalesen and Kati Hiekkapelto - author event

 Last night Derby Waterstones played host to two Nordic Noir authors - Gunnar Staalesen from Norway and Kati Hiekkapelto from Finland - stopping off as part of a round Britain tour which today takes them north to the Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling. The event was chaired by Derbyshire author Sarah Ward, one of the judges for the Petrona award for best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the year, for which Hiekkapelto's debut novel The Hummingbird was short-listed this year.
As is fairly usual the event opened with the authors reading from their respective novels, but in what is for them a foreign language! An important aspect of Scandinavian crime writing is the sense of place, and both authors chose extracts which emphasised this. Kati Hiekkapelto's novels are set in northern Finland and The Defenceless takes place in spring - not the mild season filled with new growth that we expect but one of ice and snow underfoot, and temperatures still below zero! She read a section which captured the exhilaration felt by her protagonist, detective Anna Fekete, while skiing across a wide expense of frozen sea - an environment that seems totally alien to me! Gunnar Staalesen's extract seemed set in a more familiar place; in We Shall Inherit The Wind, private eye Varg Veum is on a trail which leads him to the scattered islands off Norway's west coast, a place which sounds and looks (if Google streetview is to be believed) very like the places I love in Scotland's Hebrides.
Since the days of Sjowall and Wahloo, Scandinavian crime-writing has explored moral and topical issues alongside the whodunnit aspect, and the two novel under discussion are no exceptions - We Shall Inherit The Wind is set against the controversies surrounding wind farms, while The Defenceless draws on Hiekkapelto's experiences among refugees and assylum seekers.
Sarah Ward proved to be a very able chair to the proceedings and by the time she threw the discussion open to the audience I found she'd asked every question I would have done (but probably more succinctly!)

I was a little disappointed that more of Derby's readers hadn't turned out. It's lovely to have events such as this on the doorstep but they need the support of more than half a dozen enthusiasts. On the other hand, this gave me chance to have a chat after the event with publisher Karen Sullivan of Orenda Books and translator Don Bartlett, the sort of opportunity that can be lost in a crowded room.

You can find out more about both authors and their books on Orenda Book's web site

The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto

review by Maryom

Sammy is living rough on the streets in northern Finland after his asylum application was turned down. It's not easy, particularly during the long cold winter, but back in Pakistan he believes he faces death due to his beliefs so he's hiding out, living very much hand to mouth and turning to drugs to help get him through the days. Dropping by his friend/supplier's flat, he finds himself dragged further into trouble .... but oddly it's trouble that could lead to a positive outcome for him....

 When an old man is hit by a car late at night, it's at first assumed to be just another traffic accident, but Senior Constable Anna Fekete isn't so sure. Starting with the car driver's claim that the man was already lying in the road, things don't quite add up - and the more facts the police uncover, the less things make sense. Meanwhile her colleague Esko is trying to prevent the spread to Finland of a notoriously violent street gang, The Black Cobras...and somehow through the shady world of drug dealers and illegal immigration the two investigations seem linked.

I'll start with the important bit - I loved this! It's more than just a crime novel, but examines the issues that might lead to the crimes - why people might turn to crime or drugs or why people might be driven to leave their native country and seek asylum elsewhere - without for a minute letting up on the riveting story-telling.

There was something about it that made it feel, to me at least, more like real-life than a lot of crime novels do. It has a wonderful twisty plot with a multitude of threads running round each other, and even the smallest detail comes back as an important part of the investigation. There's the atmospheric setting of Finland in 'Spring' with temperatures still well below zero, deep snow still lying on the ground and the sea frozen enough to ski on! The characters are real fully-fleshed out people - from Sammy trying to dodge deportation to Esko with his offensive in-grained racist attitude. Anna herself was once a refugee, from Hungarian-speaking Serbia, and although she's lived in Finland most of her life she still feels a certain level of displacement, and of not quite belonging to either her old home or her new one.
This is the second of the Anna Fekete series but I had no trouble jumping in and catching up with her story so far, though I don't think too much about the previous story The Hummingbird has been given away. Kati Hiekkapelto might just be my new favourite Nordic Noir writer - I'm certainly looking forward to reading more by her.




translated from the Finnish by David Hackston

 Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Orenda Books
Genre - Adult,crime, nordic noir, police procedural