Thanks to Anne Cater for organising, as always for Orenda Books. A blog tour for The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen.
What makes life perfect? Insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen knows the answer because he calculates everything down to the very last decimal.
And then, for the first time, Henri is faced with the incalculable. After suddenly losing his job, Henri inherits an adventure park from his brother – its peculiar employees and troubling financial problems included. The worst of the financial issues appear to originate from big loans taken from criminal quarters … and some dangerous men are very keen to get their money back.
But what Henri really can’t compute is love. In the adventure park, Henri crosses paths with Laura, an artist with a chequered past, and a joie de vivre and erratic lifestyle that bewilders him. As the criminals go to extreme lengths to collect their debts and as Henri’s relationship with Laura deepens, he finds himself faced with situations and emotions that simply cannot be pinned down on his spreadsheets…
Warmly funny, rich with quirky characters and absurd situations, The Rabbit Factor is a triumph of a dark thriller, its tension matched only by its ability to make us rejoice in the beauty and random nature of life.
Our Author – Antti Tuomainen
Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author Iin 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the ‘King of Helsinki Noir’ when Dark as My Heart was published. With a piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. Palm Beach Finland was an immense success, with Marcel Berlins (The Times) calling Tuomainen ‘the funniest writer in Europe’. His latest thriller, Little Siberia, was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger, the Amazon Publishing/Capital Crime Awards and the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.
My Review – The Rabbit Factor
Henri Koskinen is an actuary – someone who appreciates numbers, facts, rules. He’s not like other people. Everything in Henri’s life is in order, organised. Nothing is left to chance, Henri will have applied thought and probably maths to every decision he will have made. His life is simple and he has everything his needs, including his feline companion Schopenhauer, his only companion.
That is until Henri’s brother Juhani dies suddenly and he inherits ‘YouMeFun’ an amusement park, and it’s seems all it’s debts too. Henri has never had a debt, let alone the huge ones that the park has built up.
That is until one day his boss pushes him into a corner and he spontaneously quits his job. He’s going to do as his brother requested and run the Park. Something Juhani has struggled to do. He’d rarely been present in the park, letting the myriad of staff run the place. Individually they did well, but there wasn’t much team work and it’s clear that they aren’t aware of the financial situation that the park is in.
To help with these financial issues, it turns out Juhani has made some rather unsavoury acquaintances, and they want their money back. This of course creates problems for Henri, he’s out of his depth, there’s no maths to solve this problem.
Amusing and lyrical, made only better by Henri’s incredibly dry sense of humour. A must for all Orenda fans.
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