I’m so glad I found the Bitter Lemon Press, publishers of this little gem of a book. They produce a fantastic range of dark crime novels both set in and from places around the world – their catalogue can be viewed here. They gifted me this book in exchange for an honest review but, as always, opinions are entirely my own.
This is the first in a series featuring Inspector Hella Mauzer, the first female police officer to gain this position in the Helsinki Homicide Unit in 1948. For reasons that become evident, she has been sidelined into a much less prestigious policing job in Ivalo, a dull city that has jurisdiction over remote and rural Lapland (where the majority of the novel is set).
The book opens in 1952 when a man is reported missing to the Ivalo police team. Hella’s boss, Chief Inspector Eklund, is keen to close off the case file as a tragic accident and retain his 100% crime resolution rate, but Hella has other ideas. Travelling into remote Lapland on her own time, she uncovers a case that has far-reaching implications, a story of people’s hidden pasts, the politics of the Cold War and a situation that is far from what it seems.
One of the things I loved about this book is the character of Hella. She is incredibly determined, spiky and often downright rude, but she definitely grows on the reader! It is very satisfying to see her – over the course of the novel – use her intelligence and bravery, but also to begin to build relationships and develop a slightly warmer side. Sadly, Hella is entirely fictional – no woman in Finland made it to that rank in the police at that time.
The setting of the novel is also vitally important to the plot – this is a narrative that simply could not have happened anywhere but the wild and remote Lapland captured so beautifully by Ivar. On the one hand, it seems rustic and romanticised, but the reader is never in any doubt that the bleak and bitter conditions are highly dangerous. The remoteness of the area that Hella is investigating also adds tension to the novel; there is no easy communication or back-up for this lone female officer in the wilderness.
The plot starts slowly and Ivar sets the scene carefully. It is precisely because Hella has been cast off from the Helsinki Homicide Unit and is bored and patronised by fellow officers in Ivalo that she ends up in the situations that she does. The pace is fairly slow at the start, although this all changes as Ivar gradually ratchets up the tension later in the book.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys the Nordic Noir genre. I’m a huge fan of this type of crime fiction and of the country of Finland itself (which is what brought me to this book in the first place). The book is a slow-burner but delivers a compelling tale of a pioneering police officer in an interesting historical era for her country.