The Man Who Died

Starred review from March 19, 2018
Jaako Kaunismaa, the overweight, friendless, 37-year-old narrator of this offbeat, relentlessly funny crime novel from Tuomainen (The Healer), runs a mushroom-exporting business in Hamina, Finland. One horrible summer day, a doctor tells Jaako, who’s been suffering from nausea and dizziness, that he’s been poisoned and has only weeks to live. He rushes home to tell his wife, Taina, only to spot her and his truck driver, Petri, having sex on the patio. Taina and Petri are too busy to notice Jaako. Though he’s sure Taina is poisoning him, Jaako decides not to confront her but to focus in his remaining time on assorted threats to his company, including three local crooks who are opening a rival mushroom firm. Full of black ironies, this welter of suspicions, revenge, and hilarious physical and verbal combat makes some pungent reflections on life and death. Tuomainen probes the chilliest depths of noir comedy as he explores the question of what to do when loved ones suddenly become the enemy. Agent: Federico Ambrosini, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

Starred review from March 15, 2018
This one is a winner right from the first sentence: It's a good job you provided a urine sample, too. This is a doctor speaking, giving narrator Jaako Kaunismaa the news that he's been poisoned and will shortly be gone forever. At least for a short while, Jaako still has his gorgeous wife and their business gleaning and selling pine mushrooms in their little Finnish village. Arriving at home, burdened by his somber news, Jaako finds the gorgeous wife riding their mushrooming assistant as though she were trying to climb a mountainside on horseback. Are they the poisoners? Then there's a rival mushroom company, with thuggish management. Is it them? Jaako must turn detective to solve his own murder, and he goes about it with energy and mordant humor. After all, I'll only be murdered once. The action scenes are fun but unconvincing: our potbellied hero keeps getting the best of seasoned bullyboys. The best parts, while we wait for the surprising revelations, are Jaako's takes on his situation. From this moment on, he reasons, he can eat all the ice cream he wants, as diabetes is the least of my worries. An offbeat jewel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)