I discovered Jan Costin Wagner ten years ago during another German Literature Month and absolutely fell in love with his writing. I read and reviewed the first four novels in his Kimmo Joentaa series but never got around to read the last one, Days of Last Snow.
What made me love Wagner’s books which are all set in Finland, is the mood and the atmosphere. The mood is sombre, melancholy, reminiscent of a literary noir novel. Yes, it’s crime but on the very literary spectrum and any of his novels could also be read as meditations on loss, grief, and loneliness.
Unlike most detectives in noir novels, Joentaa isn’t so much a loner as someone who is very lonely because his wife died of cancer. It’s something we learn in book one, but it is still important in this book although he is in some sort of a relationship. I won’t say much as that would spoil other books in the series.
Days of Last Snow is a bit different from his other novels as there are different crimes. A couple is found murdered on a park bench A young girl is killed in a hit and run, and a very disturbed teenager is planning an atrocity. The story is told from different points of view which are all believable.
Strictly speaking, the Joentaa novels are police procedurals, but they feel very different from others in the genre. The story is more about why someone commits a crime than about the crime as such.
I really liked this book because of the setting, the atmosphere, and the mood. And because Joentaa is likable and relatable. I’m not too sure about the story though. There are a lot of coincidences. If I didn’t like Jan Costin Wagner’s writing so much, if he didn’t have so much to offer besides the story, I might not have been so forgiving.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the only one of the series that hasn’t been translated. If you like noirish, literary crime novels with a melancholy atmosphere, explorations of loss, grief, and loneliness, then I would highly recommend the first four in the series.
Jan Costin Wagner has written other crime novels. I think it’s about time, I had a look at those.
GLM XIV
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