James Thompson (5)Recensioni

Well, okay. I really enjoyed the setting, both as premise and description. In this respect at least, it's not bad writing. It's also not a small amount of the book, so that weighs heavy in my rating.

However. There is a practical limit on how many unique, lurid murders and coincidental subplots you can work into a story before it becomes absurd and off-putting. This had arguably too many for a series, never mind a single book. Crime novels are candy for the logic and puzzle-solving appetite of my brain, but only when they have a bit of reason and logic in them.

Will I read another one? Yeah, probably. On the chance that the things I didn't like were just a rush of first-novel enthusiasm.

Nope.

This book lacks everything - setting, some character development, maybe just a bit of novelty- that made the first one passable, and reads like a cascade of pulp covers flashing by.

This is a review of the advanced copy “Helsinki Blood” by James Thompson for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

The book is about Inspector Kari Vaara’s life as he and his mates scramble to mop up the consequences of their last round of well-intended thefts and executions.

Kari is the top cop in Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation and has been “shot to pieces.” His wife Kate has gone off with their daughter Anu due to PTSD.

Someone who knows that Kari and his colleagues stole €10 million from drug dealers is threatening him with increasingly lethal parcels tossed through his front window. Kari calls DS Milo Nieminen and police translator Sulo “Sweetness” Polvinen for help.

Together with Milo’s girlfriend Jenna and Sweetness’ cousin Mirjami, they hunker down inside Kari’s besieged apartment and wait for an excuse to go on the offensive against their old enemies. A pretext arrives when Estonian widow Salme Tamm reports her daughter Loviise missing.
Kari and company lean on the Harper brothers, casino keepers and pimps, to help them go after the usual suspects and incidentally recover Loviise.

The book feels like as a violent soap opera that owes less to other tales of Scandinavian cops than to samurai sagas and spaghetti Westerns.
This reviewer is luke warm on book and rates the book with 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.½

A Nordic crime novel of it's very own type, despite comparisons the Jo Nesbo series. Good characters and a decent plot that moves fast and violently.

As If [Vachss] had been writing in this genre½

El caso Sufia Elmi dejó a Kari Vaara con la cara llena de cicatrices, insomnio crónico, una migraña constante y un montón de fantasmas rondándole. Un año después de resolver el caso, Kari se ha trasladado a Helsinki, trabaja en horario nocturno en la brigada de homicidios y está aterrorizados por si su esposa, embarazada de nuevo, pierde al bebé, después de que abortara a los gemelos justo después de Navidades. En esta ocasión, Kari tiene que investigar a un héroe nacional de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, ya nonagenario: el Ministerio del Interio exige que se pruebe su inocencia, pero Alemania está presionando para que se le extradite. De manera paralela, Kari también empieza la investigación del asesinato y tortura de Lisa Filippv, la mujer disoluta de un hombre de negocios ruso. Se acusa injustamente a su amante y no es otro que el arrogante y despechado marido de la víctima el que le señala como asesino. Sin embargo, el amante tiene un protector en las altas esferas, lo que lleva a Kari a los corruptos pasillos del poder.

En Kaamos, justo antes de Navidades, la época más sombría del año en el Círculo Ártico, una bella inmigrante somalí aparece brutalmente asesinada en un campo nevado y presenta un extraño símbolo racial grabado en el pecho. Cuando Kari Vaara empiza su investigación, sabe que debe intentar mantener este crimen tan en secreto como sea posible porque constituiría un escándalo en una Finlandia que vive su xenofobia con vergüenza. Además, las exigencias que una investigación de este tipo tiene empiezan a pasar factra al matrimonio de Vaara. Por un lado, su mujer estadounidense, Kate, lucha por adaptarse tanto al difícil clima ártico como a la cultura del silencio y la soledad que caracterizan Finlandia. Por el otro, Vaara, quien está atormentado por su durísima infancia y primer matrimonio fracasado, descubre que el pasado llama a su puerta de nuevo: sus sospechas sobre el asesino de la joven somalí recaen, principalmente, en el hombre por el que su primera mujer le dejó.

More a note to myself than a review, cause otherwise I'll just forget the book entirely.
I wanted to give it 3 stars because I obediently read it for hours and finished in three days, but... no.
At the beginning I thought the plot was quite interesting and I even continued reading after excruciatingly detailed description of the victim's wounds and suffering.
But when the story goes further the amount of shit happening per page becomes just unbelievable.
I am not going to read more of this series but I kinda hope the next one will be set in Helsinki or another big city, because if the author again kills a bunch of people in this small town (or was it a village even?) there will be no one left.

Sufia Elmi, a beautiful Somalian refugee-turned-actress is brutally murdered on a reindeer farm, with a racial slur carved into her chest. Inspector Kari Vaara investigates and suspicion justly falls on the philandering boyfriend of his callous ex-wife; however, the autopsy reveals that two more possible suspects, one of whom commits suicide, substantially complicating the investigation because of his identity. Kari's pregnant American wife helps him remain grounded, acting a sounding board for his theories until the ex-wife ends up killed by a tire necklace, introducing yet another suspect. Scandanavian politics and life in perpetual winter are an integral part of the story. 3.5 stars.

In what can be described as noir-procedural, James Thompson introduces Inspector Vaara, a Police Chief limping among the villages and ski resorts of northern Finland. Snow Angels is the first novel of an expected series, and it opens with the mutilation murder of a Somali-born star of Finnish B-movies.

As the mystery begins to wend its way into Vaara's personal life, the bodies pile up and his home-life suffers. He never seems to take action, letting events roll over him until he is forced to act, then inevitably makes the wrong decision. He is blind to the simple explanations, instead choosing to believe his own concoction of wealthy conspirators and international intrigue. In the final pages, little he has done has helped solve the mystery.

Thompson writes all of this in the present tense, which I presume is meant to make it feel more immediate, but just feels more like a gimmick than anything else. Plus, it creates confusion: "I've still never figured out if [he] is a good actor, smarter than he seems, or if he really is the complete dolt I take him for." When did this thought happen? Is it at the time of the events happening in the next sentence, or is it in retrospect, after the case has been closed?

But, Thompson is excellent at conveying a sense of place. His Finland in December is dark, depressing, and drunk, and through Vaara's American wife, the reader understands exactly how forbidding this place is to outsiders. It's rare for a novel set in Europe to feel foreign, but Thompson accomplishes this quite well.

Overall, Snow Angels was uneven and unbelievable, but Thompson shows some promise.

I have read many books in this series, and I just expected more from Nordic writers. There was only one story in the collection that I liked at all, and that was Leena Lentolainen's story. Some of the stories were just down right rapey creepy stuff. Not the best collection for women readers.

Let me start by saying how hugely disappointed I am in myself for not being able to finish this one. I really enjoyed the first two books in this series and I will definitely stick with this author on his next book. Back to Helsiniki White; it is soooooo dark, it is sooooo political, it is soooooooo foreign. All these things are my issues, not the issues of the writer. I just could not seem to get into the story, so, after near 50% on my kindle, I gave it up.

Snow Angels is the first of a series of books that I will definitely be sticking with. It is the story of a Finnish Police Inspector, Kari Vaara, who solves the myteries that happen in his town. Well, that is what happened in the first book, anyway.

Inspector Vaara solves the murder of Sufia Elmi, an actress/model from Somolia. The murder was a bit gruesome and some of the details may turn some folks off, but I did not find it offensive. The author, James Thompson weaves you through this story and the town that it is set in with great ease. I liked the character development, as well as the characters and felt like I am getting to know them all very well in preparation for the upcoming books. I have already purchased book #2, [b:Lucifer's Tears|8854839|Lucifer's Tears (Inspector Kari Vaara, #2)|James Thompson|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Mk+PHN3VL._SL75_.jpg|13729960] and will be getting to that soon. (I need to thaw out from the cold, first)

I don't know how long the series can continue if this same number of murders continues in each book. I loved the part of the book where Inspector Vaara's wife, Kate recaps the case. She goes through and names all the players and tries to recreate a timeline etc...I found it to be very helpful and there was some humor added in.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in murder/mystery. My only minor critism of this book was that there seemed to be a lot of murders/death in this small town.

WOW WOW WOW!!!!!! This is book number 2 in the Inspectar Kari Vaara series and it was better than the first.

James Thompson writes great stories. He lets you get to know all the characters of the story and keeps them real. Like the first book Inspector Vaara is trying to solve a grisley murder. While he is doing that he is having issues at home. I don't want to say too much.

There are a lot of twists and turns and a lot of players in this story that will keep you on your toes. While I was disappointed in the ending, I will definitely be reading the next book in the series when it comes out in 2012.

I highly recommend this author if you are into police drama.

Another in the Akashic series of noir collections by city, this one is set in Helsinki, Finland. It reads easily and is amazingly noir. There are young hoodlums out on the town for a little joyful tormenting, serial killers, stolen children, savage wrestling matches in the halls of finance, devil's bargains, drugs and alcohol. I don't recall quite so many hate-filled, misogynistic rotters, some of whom get their comeuppance, in one book before.

In spite of seasonal variations, I came away feeling that Helsinki was perpetually dark, as well as economically divided, massively prejudiced against immigrants, and poisoned by its own version of testosterone. I had some inkling of this before, from Finns who came to the U.S. It was certainly borne out. This bleak portrait of Helsinki did not beckon me to see the real thing.

Good start to the series!

Imagine Finland, cold and dark. A brutal murder has happened. Inspector Vaara is on the case. He's lawful good, like I want in my lawmen. Think Walt Longmire or Joe Pickett in Scandinavia. The cultural pieces are interesting, the crime was full of twists, and I loved the relationship between Kari & Kate.

Looking forward to book 2. 3.5 stars.

Review to come.

“Instead of justice I got truth which was a poor substitute.”

Audiobook. Definitely not a tourist brochure for Finland. Right up front we are told of the Finnish racism, hatred for foreigners, especially Germans, the cold, the lack of light in the winter, and their penchant for alcohol and killing loved ones.

A Somali black movie star has been brutally murdered with a racial slur carved into her body.. The local inspector, Vaasa, married to an American ski resort manager, now pregnant with twins, knows he has political dynamite in this investigation. Suspects arrive in droves, and most of them are in the inspector’s circle. Admittedly, the town is small, but I was beginning to feel claustrophobic at the narrowness of his investigation. Mix in religious and cultural conflict and you have quite a melange. The Laestadian religion, a very conservative offshoot of Lutheranism, plays an important role in the book, as does the Koran. Both provide the motivations for many of the characters’ actions.

The Wikipaedia entry on Thompson notes that Vaara is portrayed as a “good” cop who goes bad in later novels and I can certainly see the seeds of future corruption. Given events, I wondered how he could ever follow up this novel with a second in the series. But I will certainly want to read the rest of the series. . Definitely not a book for those who like their cozies: it’s graphic and often profane.

Thompson, who had studied Finnish (as well as several other languages), was fluent in it, and lived in Finland, died in 2014 after writing four in the Vaasa series.

Very disappointing, I am Finnish, so I was really looking forward to reading this. The violence is way over the top & needlessly graphic, the author has little to offer readers who enjoy a good story so he decided to see how gross he could be instead. Give this one a miss!

Scanda mystery set in Finland

hardcover
264 pg
3.5

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The translation was a bit choppy and
This is my first meeting with Inspector Vaara.

The story was intriguing, sometimes quite intense and well developed plot
that kept me anxious to see what's next.
Yes there was a brutality I've found often in Scanda fiction

I did have a problem with a 4 letter word that appeared far more than I would have thought necessary.
There again...I have no familiarity with that particular culture so it may be a commonly used term or it may just be an Americanization term (I hope not)

I'll try Vaara again.½

On the plane down to my parents house for a visit, on the way out of the house I grab a random book for the plane out of my gargantuan TBR pile. It’s Snow Angels, by James Thompson. I honestly don’t even remember when or where I bought it. Nordic noir, from Finland. Thompson was an American living in Finland, who unfortunately died in 2014 at the age of 49.

Snow Angels on The Hawaii Project

Snow Angels reminds me strongly of John Burdett’s wonderful Sonchai Jitpleecheep series set in Thailand, in that it gets well and truly inside the head of a different culture, and makes it both strange and accessible, and in the process delivering an intriguing mystery. (Bangkok 8 is the first book).

Snow Angels explores Finland, where the winter night can last months, drinking is endemic and suicides are common. Kari Vaara is chief of police investigating the horrific death of a beautiful Somali actress. Is it a hate crime, or something else?

The mystery curls in on itself pretty quickly, where Kari knows one of a handful of people did it, but can’t quite connect the dots to figure out who. The writing is fast paced and the setting sucks me in; I finish the book on a 2 hour plane flight.

Comparisons to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo arise naturally, both because of the books as well as the unfortunate and premature death of the author; if you like one, you’ll like the other. It’s sad that Thompson is gone, but he’s left a few books in the series and I’m looking forward to checking them out.

(and, continuing to play with my latest hack the Book Playlist, here’s a soundtrack to listen to while you read this book: http://open.spotify.com/user/thehawaiiproject/playlist/13Fpg6NLmDy6OOURnQxjCo)½

Meet Kari Vaara. He is the inspector for a small town outside of Finland's capital of Helsinki. Just before Christmas, during the darkest time of the year in Lapland, he is confronted with the brutal (and I do mean brutal) murder of a semi-famous immigrant Somali actress. She has been viciously sexually assaulted and a racial slur has been carved into her stomach. Sex crime? Hate crime? Both? As lead investigator Vaara must sort through the clues; clues that dredge up his own haunted past. My only complaint was as lead detective Vaara should never have been allowed to stay on the case once it looked like his ex-wife's boyfriend was good for the crime. In my culture Vaara would have recused himself and left the investigation, especially since his ex-wife left him devastated. His fingering the boyfriend for the murder could be a revenge accusation. SPOILER ALERT: if not after the first murder, but certainly when his ex-wife is also murdered he should have handed over every part of the investigation and stepped as far back as possible. Just my two...
Okay, and I have another complaint albeit a small one. This is definitely an adult book. The themes, the language, the sex and violence...well, the violence was especially over the top and so many deaths (six in all) seemed unnecessary.

I don't know much about Finland except for what I've seen through the movies of Aki Kaurismaki which bring to mind lots of drinking, cold ice and snow, general depression, and a seriously dark sense of humor. To be honest, some of these stories were a little rough even for me -- particularly the ones that included some sexual violence. Although there was generally some kind of revenge / divine retribution, being in a narrative with a really horrible character can get a little old. The best stories were those that relied on a solidly written detective character (particularly Leena Lehtolainen's "Kiss of Santa" and Jarkko Sipila's "Silent Night." [Also, Finnish names are really weird, guys.] A few of the stories were originally written in English, but most were translated from Finnish for this book. The editor notes in his preface that Finnish authors don't usually see a lot of crossover appeal because there is something unusual about Finland that just doesn't translate to other cultures. I could definitely see a little bit of that here, but that oddness and untranslatability often added to the creepy noir feeling of the stories.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2015/07/helsinki-noir-edited-by-james-thompson.htm... ]½

Like other reviewers, I found this collection of short stories to be dark in a disturbing way. The authors are exceptional in their ability to keep a grim, gritty, twisted atmosphere. I found that it easier to read the stories in small chunks rather than all together. I was less likely to have nightmares that way. I wonder how representative of Finnish Noir this collection is. I'm not well versed in Finnish literature; but if this IS representative, I'm pretty sure I won't be reading more.

**This was an advanced reader copy won through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.**

A blizzard struck again this week depositing snow knee-deep and now it’s snowing again. Temperatures hover in the single digits to low 20s. Snow, sleet, and ice rotate ad nauseam requiring out of body moments to escape. The brief charm of snowfall is quickly replaced by the lasting smears of dirty white and mud. Life seems treacherous.

In Helsinski Noir, that kind of winter shrouds the characters with predictably dark consequences. Dampness and cold infuse down to the bone. Things smell like wet dogs and all surfaces are frozen. The landscape is unforgiving.

Images of bad women, stupid men, and suspicious alleys may be elements found in Hollywood’s noir films but the 14 stories in this collection, most translated from their original Finnish, feature a world more twisted. Children feature prominently in some of the stories, (“The Hands of Ai”) as do themes of human trafficking and racism. Some of the stories are strange, unsettling and difficult to grasp; “St Peter’s Street’ is one. Four pages in length, it features an island, some ice and a sauna. But what precisely happens? “Little Black” involves violence and degradation of immigrant women. A point is made but getting there is grim.

If you can deal with hard-boiled grittiness times two, you can learn something about Finland from these stories. Like Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy set in Sweden, these stories debunk the more positive associations with Finland. Sweden is not always the sunny pictures in an Ikea catalog, and Finland is not merely the “affluent postmodern” Finland with Nokia, a point elaborated on in “Snowy Sarcophagus.” This story also is closer to more mainstream detective stories with the sympathetic inspector, plugging away at the details of a crime to solve it. It is one of the less overtly grisly and macabre tales.

My favorite story was the last one, “Stolen Lives” in which the narrator follows the footsteps of Patricia Highsmith’s famous sociopath, Tom Ripley. Yet one would have to acknowledge that it is the not-for-the-faint-of-heart flavor of most of the other stories in this collection that leaves the reader with a sense of Helsinki and Finnish culture, distilled down to its darkest layer. Despite all the nastiness of many of these characters, you may be tempted to try other books in the Noir series published by Akashic Books. See what evil still lurks in the hearts of men when seemingly endless winter isn’t a major player.

I won [book:Helsinki Noir|20949629], the newest installment of Akashic Publishing's ____(city) Noir series, from LibraryThing. The collection of stories, set in Finland's capital city, Helsinki, is edited by one of my favorite authors, [author:James Thompson|2114] whose Kari Vaara series I love. (Sadly, Thompson died suddenly several months ago, a great loss for crime fiction.)Thompson's contribution to the collection, The Hand of Ai is an excellent if somewhat gruesome work.

The collection is overall excellent, although very dark. I often read short stories in great gulps, reading five or six in one sitting but I was unable to do this with Helsinki Noir-it is very noir indeed and very bloody. But what I found most disconcerting was the unremitting grimness of the characters and their lives. I welcomed Jarkko Sipila's Silent Night for the more detached tone of a police procedural (note: more detached, not just "detached). This may be the noirest of all the noir books in this series that I have so far read.

This is definitely not a book for the faint of heart. But it is beautifully atmospheric and the stories are almost all excellent. I would advise readers to pace themselves to avoid overload. But if you are a fan of "Nordic Noir," this is definitely a book to read.