Palm Beach Finland – Antti Tuomainen

Published by Orenda Books, October 2018
Source: Review copy

Jan Nyman, the ace detective of the covert operations unit of the National Central Police, is sent to a sleepy seaside town to investigate a mysterious death. Nyman arrives in the town dominated by a bizarre holiday village – the ‘hottest beach in Finland’. The suspect: Olivia Koski, who has only recently returned to her old hometown. The mission: find out what happened, by any means necessary.

Regular readers of this blog will know how much I loved Antti Tuomainen’s last book, the delightfully different and very funny The Man Who Died, which made it onto my top five crime books of last year and created a new genre of Mushroom Noir.

So, it was with no small measure of excitement that I discovered Mr Tuomainen’s Palm Beach Finland was another venture into the darkly comic. And darkly comic it is. Billed as ‘Sex, lies and ill-fiting swimwear’, Palm Beach Finland is a splendidly odd romp set in the hottest beach resort in Finland.

Undercover cop Jan Nyman is sent undercover to investigate a strange death and finds rather more than he bargained for. The resort (and what a resort!) is populated with a fantastic cast of characters – business mogul Jorma Leivo, the glorious double act of Chico and Robin, and Olivia Koski who only wants to live in her beachfront house in peace.

If The Man Who Died evoked memories of Fargo, then Palm Beach Finland is a heady neon cocktail of Miami Vice, with a dash of Baywatch and a beach umbrella to top it off. Antti Tuomainen delivers another beautifully judged dark vein of humour running through the neon and pastels, but lurking behind the colourful facade, there’s a splendid noirish tale of murder.

I loved Palm Beach Finland. Other blogs on the tour will go into far more detail than I will, suffice it to say that this is another gem from the King of Helsinki Noir. Antti gave us #mushroomnoir, and now #flamingonoir. What will he come up with next?

I, for one, cannot wait to find out.

Huge props to the excellent translation work by David Hackston.

Palm Beach Finland by Antti Tuomainen is published by Orenda Books and is out now. Many thanks to Karen Sullivan and Anne Cater at Orenda for the review copy.
Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. The critically acclaimed My Brother’s Keeper was published two years later. In 2011, Tuomainen’s third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for ‘Best Finnish Crime Novel of 2011’ and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. Two years later, in 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the ‘King of Helsinki Noir’ when Dark as My Heart was published. With a piercing and evocative style, 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.