Helsinki White (Inspector Vaara Novel) [Hardcover]

Even in the world of Scandinavian crime thrillers, this book stands out for its dark view of the world of policemen and criminals. In 2010 Newsweek picked Finland as the best place in the world to live but the Finland described in this harsh, bleak policier is far from idyllic. Its politicians are uniformly corrupt. With porous frontiers, the trafficking in drugs and women is out of hand. Short on personnel and hampered by the laws, the police can't stop it. Unemployment is rampant and with it, hatred of the foreigners who have entered the country and compete with Finns for jobs. The fastest growing political party in Finland is the True Finns, who are campaigning on a platform of the deportation of non-natives. Behind them lurks the specter of a growing neo-Nazi fringe.

Kari Vaala is the only policeman in this increasingly fractured country to have been shot twice in the line of duty. He is close to a national hero as a result. Now Kari is approached by the national chief of police: he wants Kari to head a covert black ops group. It will operate outside the law, robbing criminals and using their money and drugs to finance its further operations. Kari hesitates and the chief reminds him that he's not "some kind of a Good Samaritan in a white hat." He's "a rubber-hose cop, a thug and a killer... You'll do anything to get what you view as justice... You're frustrated because you can't make a difference... With our limited ... resources, we can't possibly make even a dent in the human slavery industry. Picture all those victims and how many ... you could save from abject misery." Kari gives in. He handpicks his team. One member is "a violent nutcase with an IQ of 172," the other an amiable giant of a sociopath.

But for a year Kari has suffered terrible headaches. He finally goes in for an examination. The examination discloses a large, aggressive tumor which must be removed at once. The operation is a success but there is an unfortunate side effect: Kari is cancer-free but no longer feels anything inside. He's become a sociopath, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. He tries to hide his lack of emotion from his wife and his partners in the black ops unit, but it becomes harder when he is called back to investigate two high profile cases: the torture death of an immigrant rights activist and a kidnapping case with racist overtones.

Corruption surrounds and contaminates Kari. His boss makes him take a share of the money he has taken from the criminals because otherwise how can the powers that be (who also take a share) trust him? His team engages in one illegal activity after another -blackmail, robbery, threats, torture, killings. His wife is drinking more and more: he has to buy baby formula because her breast milk is contaminated with alcohol. By the time he solves the cases, the damage to his own life and hers may be irreparable.

This is a very dark novel but also an exceptionally good one. The action never flags, and although the general direction of Kari's investigations is clear as the plot progresses, the author never telegraphs what will happen. The characters are compelling and clearly drawn. Thompson was born and raised in Kentucky but has lived in Finland for the past dozen years. He writes about his adopted country with authority. I haven't read the previous two novels in this series, but if they are as good as this one, I most certainly will.

What has happened to Kari Vaara, the hero of the Helsinki police force? "After being shot twice in the line of duty and being decorated for bravery both times - and especially since Milo and I stopped a school shooting and were glorified in the press for saving the lives of children - I'm a nationally respected figure." He has fallen a long way since Thompson's two previous Vaara novels. In this noir and bleak novel, Kari is morally corrupt and bankrupt

Without any spoilers, the novel starts out with Kari and his wife becoming parents for the first time. Kate gives birth to a lovely girl, Anu. Shortly after this, Kari is asked to join a black ops division which reports directly to the chief of police. The idea is that Kari and his two henchmen (one a crazy genius and the other an alcoholic dimwit) will steal from the bad guys, keep part of the proceeds themselves, give some to the boss, and use the rest to fund the unit. Kari rationalizes to himself that he can make a positive difference by getting pimps, dealers, and all-around bad guys busted. He can do it high-tech, too, without violence - or so he thinks, despite both of his colleagues having a penchant for violence. However, Kate, his wife, says to him "That makes you a dirty cop." And she is right. However, in Kari's mind 'We're not going to war with the criminals of Helsinki, we're going to steal them broke and put them out of business."

Another problem that Kari has is that he has a brain tumor that needs immediate surgery. First there needs to be a biopsy and then the actual surgery which comes with many risks, some quite severe. Kari's brother is a neurologist and he speeds up the process at the hospital so that Kari gets first priority. In Finland, there is no cost for medical treatment and this whole surgery is free!

On the country's political side, a dark horse party is quickly gaining ground. This is called the Real Finn party, "like a more virulent strain of American Teabaggers." However, Real Finns practice hatred toward immigrants. "Other than hate, their agenda wasn't clear." Finland is in dire financial straits with nearly 20% of the population living below the poverty line. Jobs are being outsourced to other countries, inflation is high and wages are stagnant. It is a good petrie dish for a hate agenda.

When the head of Lisbet Soderlund is sent to the Finnish Somalia Network, all hell breaks loose. The Finnish Somalia Network represents Somali immigrants in Finland. Soderlund is a past member of the European parliament and, at the time of her death, is the minister of immigration and European affairs. Jyri, Kari's boss, asks him to work on the murder. They want Kari specifically to work on this murder because he solved the murder of the first high-profile black person ever murdered in Finland - the Sufia Elmi murder.

The book deals a lot with Kari's conflicting feelings about what he's doing, the fall-out from the murder investigation, and the corruptness found everywhere in Finland. There is a lot of talk about weapons and technology that I found boring, and the book proceeds with uneven pacing. There is a lot missing in this book compared to Thompson's two previous novels.

"There's a great myth believed by nearly everyone that Finland is corruption-free. Police and politicians are scripture pure, dedicated to the good of the nation beyond all things. Foreigners even write about it in travel guides for tourists." That's Kari Vaara, telling us about his country in the first pages of James Thompson's new novel, Helsinki White. Shortly thereafter, he goes on to say, "I run a heist gang. I'm a police inspector, shakedown artist, strong-arm specialist and enforcer...Three months ago, I was an honest cop."
What a way to kick-off a book!
Snow Angels, James Thompson's first novel to feature Vaara as a protagonist, was named by Booklist as one of the ten best debut crime novels of 2010 and was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony.
His second, Lucifer's Tears, was included in Kirkus's List of the Best Novels of 2011. And anyone who knows Kirkus also knows that they're the toughest critics that ever there were - or are.
Now, Thompson has given us the third in his series, Helsinki White -- and it's as cool as a Nordic wind.
As the book begins, Vaara's personal life is bittersweet: on the positive side, he's a new dad, deeply in love with his American wife, Kate, and infant daughter Anu; on the negative, he continues to suffer from paralyzing headaches, is haunted by his past exploits and is obsessed by thoughts about the type of man he has become.
Meanwhile, his professional life keeps getting worse: He and his boss, Jyri Ivalo, are polar (no pun intended) opposites. The National Chief of Police is as corrupt and twisted as they come. Vaara, on the other hand, is an essentially moral man who sees his position in the police as a path to doing good, perhaps the only thing he's qualified for in the doing-good department.
The men hate each other, and the Chief would fire Vaara if he could.
But Vaara has something on him that would destroy the Chief's career.
And despite the fact that the rot doesn't stop with Ivalo, despite the fact that his principal assistant, a man he can't get rid of, is a sociopath, despite the fact that he's been put in charge of a clandestine unit which has been specifically created to function outside the law, Vaara wants to stay on.
Couldn't get any worse, you think?
Then you don't know James Thompson.
Before the first chapter is out, Vaara discovers his headaches are being caused by a brain tumor.
You might conclude, from the little I've told you, that Helsinki White isn't a cheerful book.
Well, you'd be right there. But it's a fascinating one, superbly written and full of insights about Thompson's adopted country. Take this one, about drinking:
"It's May second, a sunny Sunday...The outdoor bars are packed...Yesterday was Vappu - May Day, the heaviest drinking holiday of the year - and most of these people have been drunk non-stop, morning to night, since they got off from work on Friday."
Or this one, a scene that takes place on a tram:
"Two elderly women, one on a walker, asked the driver, a black immigrant, a question about where to get off to reach her destination. He answered in accented but understandable Finnish. The two grannies sat in front of me and spoke in loud voices, to make certain he could hear, and discussed how the (racial epithet deleted) ought to learn to speak the (expletive deleted) language. The grannies garnered guffaws."
Note: both the racial epithet and the expletive add flavor, and the anecdote can't be fully appreciated without them, but this review wouldn't be published in certain venues if I'd left them in.
And how about this unpleasant truth: "Here in Finland and the surrounding countries, thousands of gangsters orchestrate the buying and selling of young girls, and hundreds or thousands of those girls pass through this nation every year..."
Corruption, crooked cops, racism; wholesale exploitation of minors; not what you imagined Finland to be like, is it?
No, Me neither.
White slavery issues play the most prominent roles in Helsinki White, but there are a lot of other things going on as well: the unsolved kidnapping of a billionaire's children; the murder of a Swedish-speaking Finn, a champion of immigrants' rights; the drug trade; Vaara's blooming relationship with Arvid Lahtinen and the increasingly-sinister role of Adrien Moreau.
Talk about rich characters! Lahtinen is a war hero, wanted for extradition by the Germans. Arvid knew Vaara's grandfather during the war. They killed men together. And Moreau is a French policeman, Finnish by birth, who spent fifteen years in the French Foreign Legion, exercised his right as a Legionnaire and took French citizenship and identity.
There's only one thing wrong with Helsinki White: it's too short. And, if it was twice as long, it would still be too short. It's a first-class crime novel, and I don't think it will harm your enjoyment of the book to share the words Thompson uses to conclude the final chapter. By then, the mysteries have been cleared-up and (most of) the bad guys have gotten their just deserts.
"June twenty-sixth is mid-summer's eve, the third anniversary of Kate and my first meeting. On the twenty-fourth, I text Kate, ask her if she would like to spend our anniversary together. She doesn't reply.
"Except for our two disastrous dinners, I've seen no one since I went into self-imposed isolation. I call my brother Timo. He's having a party. He invited me a while ago, and I ask if I can still come. Sure.
"I go, get whacked on Timo's pontikka, eat grilled sausages. They light the bonfire at midnight. I get a text from Kate. 'I miss you.' I don't think she wants a reply. I put the phone back in my pocket, have a long drink from my glass of pontikka, and watch the flames climb higher."
Where will the author take Kate and Kari Vaara from here? Has Thompson backed himself into a corner with their relationship? I hope not.
But we're going to have to wait a year to find out.