Description
A desperate sawmill owner’s attempt to save his business spirals into crime, chaos and unintended consequences in a hilarious, dark, nailbiting thriller by the international bestselling author of The Winter Job.
**Best Finnish Crime Novel of the Year***
'The king of the humorous crime caper' Abir Mukherjee
'It may seem hard to find good comic crime-writers, but clearly we haven't been looking in Finland' Telegraph
‘The funniest writer in Europe’ Sunday Times
‘The pace never lets up, and there is a sense of suspense and danger with every turn of the page … Few writers can make the tragic so funny and yet infuse the personal stories with such compassion and with such an understanding of human fallibility and frailty’ Paul Burke, Riveter
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Sawdust, secrets and a body that won't stay dead…
Heikki Nevalainen is the proud owner of a once successful sawmill, a mountain of debt and very few options to deal with either of them. An unexpected solution arrives in the form of local gangster Ismo Sippo. Dispose of Sippo’s dead wife, and the sawmill can keep running. Refuse, and Heikki loses everything. Horrified but desperate, Heikki agrees, loads Annaleena into his car and heads for the mill.
But Annaleena proves to be not quite as dead as expected.
As a Belgian buyer arrives to inspect the mill’s timber, Heikki scrambles to keep up appearances. But the situation is splintering fast, and even his own workers seem to be hatching plans of their own…
Deadlines loom, tempers fray and misunderstandings multiply, and as the interminable situation grows ever worse, Heikki discovers that keeping a sawmill running is hard enough without a half-dead body and potentially fatal complications…
Blending deadpan humour, escalating danger and absolute chaos, The Fresh Cut is Antti Tuomainen at his most audacious, as good intentions, bad decisions and a small Finnish town collide with explosive results.
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Praise for Antti Tuomainen
‘As darkly fun as any Coen brothers’ offering’ Vaseem Khan
‘You don’t expect to laugh when you’re reading about terrible crimes, but that’s what you’ll do when you pick up one of Tuomainen’s decidedly quirky thrillers’ New York Times
‘Humour drier than a desert snake’s belly’ Ian Moore
‘Tuomainen has a talent for creating offbeat characters … [a] tense, pacy novel, laced with the author's trademark laconic humour’ Guardian
‘Thrilling and hilarious’ Liz Nugent
‘Quirky, murderous … imagine blending a Donald Westlake comic mishap caper with some famous Nordic levity’ Irish Times
‘Laconic, thrilling and warmly human’ Christopher Brookmyre
‘The antic novels of Antti Tuomainen prove that comedy is not lost in translation … Tuomainen, like Carl Hiaasen before him, has the knack of combining slapstick with genuine emotion’ The Times
‘Right up there with the best’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Quirky crime capers don't come more left field … extremely funny’ Daily Mail
‘Delicious stuff, expertly juggling dark humour and quirky characterisation’ Financial Times
‘Finland's greatest export’ M.J. Arlidge
‘A winner right from the first sentence’ Booklist
‘A refreshing change from the decidedly gloomier crime fiction for which Scandinavia is known’ Publishers Weekly
‘Fresh and witty’ Chris Ewan
‘Charming, funny and clever’ Literary Review
‘A delight from start to finish’ Big Issue
‘The villain could have stepped straight out of a Martin Scorsese film or The Sopranos … written with great warmth, [it] possesses the irresistible allure of an adult fairy tale’ Helsingin Sanomat
