The Rabbit Factor

Soon after actuary Henri Koskinen, the narrator of this rollicking tale of contemporary crime and punishment from Finnish author Tuomainen (Little Siberia), resigns from his job at an insurance company staffed with “functionally innumerate psychobabblers,” his brother dies of an apparent heart attack, leaving him YouMeFun, an adventure park near Helsinki. (“A box of tin and steel, painted in garish red, orange and yellow, and almost 200 metres across, it was an eyesore, no matter which colour of tinted spectacles you used to look at it.”) YouFunMe includes a monstrous mechanical rabbit, seven peculiar staff members, and an enormous debt to murdering loan sharks. Henri’s math skills overcome multiple assaults by baddies and police alike, but his analytical powers melt when Laura Helanto, his fun house decorator, teaches him both business and mutual cost-benefit pleasures. Tuomainen neatly skewers the “positive team synergies” of today’s corporate world as his hero, armed with the rabbit’s broken ear, sets out to solve “a perfect equation” of love and money. Full of refreshing wit and wisdom, this comic departure from the usual Scandi noir is a treat. (May)