Book Review: The Exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto

In The Exiled, police detective Anna Fekete takes a break from the cold of Finland to return to Kanizsa, the Balkan village of her birth. But, what's meant to be a relaxing holiday turns into a fresh investigation, as her bag is stolen and the thief found dead next day in the mud of the riverbank.

Anna can't help but get involved - even though her intervention is not entirely welcomed by the Serbian authorities. Details of their investigation don't ring true and she suspects something is amiss. As she probes more deeply into the background of the dead man - a Romany living on the marginalised fringes of society - she becomes more and more convinced that his death was no accident. She finds evidence of traffickers taking advantage of the thousands of refugees trying to cross the border into Hungary, of corruption and cover ups by officials. And, most frightening of all, a trail that leads back to her own family, that threatens to reopen the wounds of hurt and grief from her past.

Anna is a complex character - as readers of Kati Hiekkapelto's previous two Fekete novels The Hummingbird and The Defenceless will already know. Living in one country with her roots in another, she finds it hard to feel fully at home in either. Her policeman father was killed on duty while she was still a child and, in following in his footsteps, she's driven to extremes in her singular dedication. Her mother wants nothing more than for Anna to settle down with a family of her own - the accepted feminine role in traditional Kanizsa - but she is unwilling and unable to conform.

As in The Defenceless, Hiekkapelto mines themes that resonate with the world today; of migrants forced to flee from war, enduring the most abject conditions in their desperate scrabble for survival. Of racism, prejudice and playing politics with people's lives. Of a village fighting to retain its values and identity. In the midst of this she places Anna and her family, her loss of her father and older brother and renewed friendships with villagers who have never left Kanizsa.

Hiekkapelto writes in her signature taut, gritty and unsparing style - translated once again from the Finnish by David Hackston - though at times it feels like the insights into Anna's home life are weighing the story down. For me, it takes longer than in previous books for all the elements to come together - there are too many new friends and family members to fully get to grips with, perhaps. But the help she receives from Finnish colleagues leads to breakthroughs and her new relationship with Péter, a man she only began flirting with for information, becomes an intriguing aside. In the last third of the book, the tension mounts as the enormity of the crime is uncovered, leading to a shocking and satisfying conclusion.

The Exiled is published in paperback and ebook by Orenda Books. Thanks to Karen at Orenda for my review copy.

Book Review: The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto

A chilling sense of place pervades the best northern noir thrillers - the biting cold, claustrophobic darkness and engulfing isolation combining to create a perfect backdrop for the grisliest of crimes. It is there in the Icelandic setting of Ragnar Jonasson's Snowblind which I reviewed recently, and can be found in spades (or should that be snow shovels?) in Finnish writer Kati Hiekkapelto's The Defenceless, translated by David Hackston.

This is Hiekkapelto's second book to feature police investigator Anna Fekete, following her highly regarded debut The Hummingbird. It opens in the winter cold - as Pakistani Christian Sammy, a migrant who arrived in Finland via Russia alongside the heroin he knows only too well, is searching for his next hit. Having been refused asylum, he's living illegally, scavenging and sleeping in bins. He comes to the police's attention when he's caught at his dealer's flat during a raid - but what does he have to do with an old man, who lived in the same apartment block, having been found dead on a desolate road? Or their missing neighbour - a woman who might just have seen too much?

This is a novel of multiple strands which Anna only gradually begins to unravel, as she does so finding herself mired in the complexities of illegal immigration, drug dealers, gang warfare and murder. She reflects:

There is a classic Finnish combination at the root of most homicides: blades and alcohol. Normally it was an axe and alcohol. 

As a Hungarian immigrant, Anna knows how it feels to be an outsider. Living alone, she takes her comfort where she can but her thoughts often fly to her family back home. Yet, she is a modern woman; athletic, environmentally aware, not yet ready for a steady relationship and all the compromises that might bring. And, like so many who have been transplanted into a different culture, she no longer feels that she truly belongs anywhere:

She tried to call her mother on Skype. She wanted to talk about Grandma, her final days, her funeral. She wanted to tell her mother about the pain, her sense of longing, to talk about Zoran, to ask her mother why breaking up with a married man, with whom she hadn't officially been together, could feel so terrible. There was no answer. Thank God, she thought. I don't normally talk to Mum about my feelings and certainly not about my sex life. Besides, her mother would have seen straight through it all and said that Anna needed to be in touch with her roots, whatever form that touch might take.

Anna's police partner Esko, on the other hand - an unreconstructed aging alpha male who smokes and drinks too much and is so unfit that he almost kills himself running after a suspect - embodies racist, anti-immigrant attitudes like the true relic from the past that he is. But, as he delves deeper into the activities of a criminal gang and it seems that his own life may be in danger, a well of loneliness emerges - which means he and Anna are much more alike than they could ever originally have imagined.

If, like me, your knowledge of Finnish literature is limited (in a quick scan, I could only identify Tove Jansson and Arto Paasilinna on my shelves), then Kati Hiekkapelto's writing makes a welcome addition to the fold. Here is a writer who is always in the most masterful control of her story; her plotting complex, her taut prose full of suspense. Most of all, she strikes a particularly poignant chord at a time when we are witnessing in Europe one of the largest mass migrations - and creating the greatest number of potential outsiders - in recent history.

The Defenceless is translated into English by David Hackston and published in the UK by Orenda Books. Many thanks to Karen at Orenda for the photos and review copy.