A plot that thickens!

This was the 2nd book by Antii Tuimainen I have read. Both books start with an offbeat premise and follow how the quite ordinary / everyday protagonist responds to the situation. In this case a pastor in a quiet Finland village is tasked with guarding a recently discovered meteor until the authorities can arrive to take it away. Thus the stage is set for a cast of locals who see an opportunity to steal an object worth a million euros and escape their humdrum village lives, competing with a more conventional hardcore criminal from Russia who is hellbent on stealing the meteor for himself.

The pastor quickly finds himself at the centre of the action just as he is confronting an acute personal crisis. Soon this ordinary man is living more like an accidental character in a thriller as he reels from one scene to the next as his own personal stakes in the tale increase ever so quickly.

Many people have described this book as having a feel similar to Fargo and I would agree that this story has a similar vibe. The author has a very clever way of weaving the character’s stories together and throwing in quite a few red herrings along the way, often delivering these with dashes of dark humour and there is quite a few “cringe” moments when people’s worlds collide with each other and the author dives into these scenes with great delight.

Narration is perfect, the only thing to note is that the book has been translated from Finnish so some of the names of people or places can be hard at first to work out until you become familiar with them.

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