Helsinki, 1982. Recently divorced postal worker Ilmari Nieminen has promised his daughter a piano for Christmas, but with six days to go – and no money – he’s desperate. A last-minute job offers a solution: transport a valuable antique sofa to Kilpisjärvi, the northernmost town in Finland.
With the sofa secured in the back of his van, Ilmari stops at a gas station, and an old friend turns up, offering to fix his faulty wipers, on the condition that he tags along. Soon after, a persistent Saab 96 appears in the rearview mirror. And then a bright-yellow Lada. That’s when Ilmari realises that he is transporting something truly special. And that’s when Ilmari realises he might be in serious trouble…
Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, Tuomainen’s third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. In 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the ‘King of Helsinki Noir’ when Dark as My Heart was published.
Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) was an immense success, with The Times calling Tuomainen ‘the funniest writer in Europe’, and Little Siberia (2019) was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. It was released as a Netflix film in 2025.
The Rabbit Factor, the first book in a trilogy that includes The Moose Paradox and The Beaver Theory, is now in production for TV with Amazon Studios, starring Steve Carell. The Moose Paradox was a Literary Review and Guardian Book of the Year and shortlisted for CrimeFest’s Last Laugh Award. The trilogy was followed in 2024 by The Burning Stones. Antti lives in Helsinki with his wife.
My thoughts: Taking a last minute delivery job that turns out to be a complete nightmare, Ilmari the postman is determined to buy a piano for his daughter for Christmas.
The dodgy van he’s given guzzles fuel and isn’t exactly designed for driving through the snow. He picks up an old friend, and some unwanted followers – a Lada and a Saab, both want the sofa in the back of the van and are prepared to do almost anything to get it.
This blackly comic tale of a desperate drive across Finland to deliver a sofa and the unpleasant surprise they find inside it, made me laugh, it’s quite silly and weird, which is very Tuomainen, whose books I really enjoy. The stakes are pretty high and the ending is rewarding, definitely worth a re-read, maybe at Christmas!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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