Finnish crime fiction – wasting an opportunity?

I have followed the Scandinavian crime fiction scene for a while. A lot of people interested in crime fiction do that for the moment – it’s pretty hot. One thing that has occurred to me is that the Finns seem to have been left behind and that for some or other reason there are very few Finnish crime fiction books available – compared to, for instance, Swedish or Norwegian crime fiction books.

I recently reviewed a book by Matti Joensuu here on this site. And I have read several other Finnish crime fiction books as well; they are all very good! Even so, Matti Joensuu is one of very few others translated into English so far – the others seem to be Tove Jansson (who writes crime fiction as well as about Moomins) and Jarkko Sipila. Given that there a lot of interesting crime fiction authors in Finland (Scandinavian Books list a number of good Finnish crime fiction writers) – several authors have been translated into other languages, and they have their annual crime fiction prize called “The Clue” – this is somewhat strange and disappointing.

It is hard to know why Finnish crime fiction isn’t translated at the same rate as other crime fiction. One thing I have noticed is that there hardly are any good English language web sites from Finland about Finnish crime fiction. The publishers don’t seem to bother with it, literary agencies don’t do it, newspapers don’t have it, and not even the Finnish crime writers association has launched an English language site. So obviously one reason the Finns do not benefit much from the surge in interest in Scandinavian crime fiction is that they don’t promote their own authors and books internationally – not even via web sites. That’s pretty sad.

The only exception is a new small publishing company called Ice Cold Crime that so far has translated and published two novels by Clue award winner Jarkko Sipila, and will soon introduce Harri Nykanen, another Clue award winner, to English speaking readers for the first time. That, of course, is good news, and a good initiative by Ice Cold Crime. But even so – there is every reason to urge both the Finns themselves and the publishers in the UK and the US go please do something about this sad state of affairs! The time to move is now.

Tagged as: Finnish crime fiction, Harri Nykanen, Jarkko Sipila, Matti Joensuu, not available, opportunity, Tove Jansson