It all begins with an anonymous email. Investigative reporter Janne Vuori’s interest is piqued when he gets a message that a mine in northern Finland is poisoning the environment. Travelling there doesn’t get him much. Security is high & the locals are strangely tight lipped. Back in the city Janne begins to track down the company’s executives but oddly enough, they seem to be dropping like flies before he can even get an interview.

But once Janne senses a story, his obsessive nature kicks in & soon he’s mixing it up with eco-warriors & company thugs as he continues to dig. His search for the truth becomes all consuming & causes cracks in his relationship with Pauliina. She wants a partner who’s home for dinner & present to care for their daughter.

Janne loves his family but it’s not like he had a role model for the job. His father walked out when he was a little boy & neither he nor his mother heard from him again. Until now. Emil reappears one day & over the course of the book we learn where he’s been & why he left. In alternate chapters we follow a nameless hitman as he quietly & efficiently eliminates the mining company’s head honchos.

There are many threads to the plot & everyone seems to have a hidden agenda. Janne is up against powerful men with secrets they’ll do anything to protect including killing those who get too close. Janne’s personal life also evolves as the story progresses. His relationship with Emil develops slowly & he’s in for a few shocks as he gets to know his father.

The setting is another character in the book & the author uses descriptions of the cold winds & unrelenting snowfall to create a dark & atmospheric read that will have you reaching for a sweater. Most of our time is spent with Janne, a complex & fully realized character. Emil is just as compelling & I found his story just as intriguing as the main plot. Pauliina is less developed but she is a secondary character that we get to know mostly through Janne’s eyes.

It’s a story about greed & the abuse of power that touches on the battle between industrial progress & protecting the environment. Kudos to David Hackston for an smooth translation that allows the reader to get caught up in this smart, tense thriller. ( )

Dark, emotive, complex and utterly brilliant, Antti Tuomainen's The Mine is crime mystery at it's best.

Set in the harsh winter months of Finland, Tuomainen's flawless and honed descriptions of places and environment literally had me shivering in my seat. With the main protagonist being a highly driven but flawed young male, I was thrilled when we discover that not only are we going on a journey with Janne on his quest for the truth about what is going on at The Mine, but also and equally as important, his personal one.

Janne wants to be the best journalist he can possibly be, that is the highly driven part of him, the flawed part lies with his other roles in life; husband and father. Also mixed up within the plot are his emotions about his own parents, particularly his father, who left when Janne was just a year old. Tuomainen has created very real and believable characters and I particularly devoured the dialogue between Janne and his wife, Pauliina.

The novel is complex and I can only assume that the author must have retired to bed with a confused and aching head on more than one occasion to thrash out just how he was going to carefully and plainly breakdown the threads of the plot to one easily digestible book. But achieve that he has and hat's off to him.

The pace is fast and not one chapter passes without a significant piece of detail coming to light, which I loved. Written in both first and third person narratives, I also liked that the perspective and investigation came from somewhere other than the police line. Janne isn't out to uncover the crime per se, but moreover the truth - but boy, a lot of crimes take place throughout the duration of the story.

This novel reminded me of Erin Brockovich, but with much more testosterone and bloodshed. A certain page turner until the very end. ( )

The Mine – Classic Finnish Noir

Antti Tuomainen is leading the Finnish invasion of crime noir from his homeland, and with The Mine it is easy to see why he is an award-winning writer. He has brought his simple way of storytelling that has a wonderful mixture of passion and at times sadness, to give us a compelling thriller wondering how it all will end.

The story brings together a journalist, a hitman, a broken family and a toxic mine spewing out secrets that others would prefer to be kept silent. A traumatic story of family, corruption and that secrets never remain hidden and that come back and bite you.

Janne Vuori is a well-known journalist on a Helsinki newspaper well known for its quality reporting, something Janne prides himself on. When he receives a tip off about a nickel mine and the toxins it is dumping in to the environment, then his natural curiosity causes him to head north to find out more.

What he does not realise that in chasing the story at the cost of all other things then his relationship with Pauliina, mother of his daughter Ella collapse completely. At the same time after thirty years he meets his own father, who has a complicated history of his own and it seems strange that he is now back, searching him and his mother out.

While investigating the ownership of the Northern Finnish mine, he finds that members of the board are being murdered while one has committed suicide. The owners of the company seem to be well hidden and there must be a story will raise the possibility that he too could become a target.

The Mine is a gripping and traumatic environmental thriller and how far people will go to hide the truth, while secrets from the past come back to haunt you. The book is well written and has been translated by David Hackston, so that none of the beauty and elegance of Tuomainen’s prose is not lost to the reader.

The Mine is thriller that shows off the best of Finnish Noir and ask why has it been hidden from the English reader for so long. Thank God for Orenda Books for bringing Antti Tuomainen to our attention and I can guarantee a book you cannot put down. ( )