Pirulainen by Tomas Gads

In its original Swedish, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is Män som hatar kvinnor: Men who hate women. Tomas Gads - actually a duo of Finnish women - could perhaps borrow that title for their translation of "Pirulainen". A police thriller, very much in tune with Stieg Larsson, Pirulainen begins with the death of an industrialist in the Turku archipelago in western Finland. Police have a hard time telling if it's murder or an accident, but the victim's family and business life all point at problems just beneath a pristine surface. And, in the end, it's the women who have it worst.

Turku is a surprisingly good location for a crime thriller. It's a city, but small enough to have some small town vibes. It's not the small town from The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, but it's also not the metropolis of so many police thrillers. Turku's archipelago is a massively underused setting in Finnish literature. Each July, Finns hop on boats and travel the thousands of islands, staying in idyllic villages and enjoying the rugged beauty and untouched nature of the national park. But once the holiday season is over, and especially as the winter months set in, the islands are a hostile home to a few thousand inhabitants, who sustain themselves on fishing and boredom. Most winters, ice surrounds the islands and makes travel difficult or impossible. Only the eccentric seem to survive the whole year. Most of the action in Pirulainen takes place in the city of Turku, but the opening drama - and a memorable mid-book detour - make use of the archipelago.

Pirulainen stands out from many crime thrillers by focusing on the police charged with the investigation and not the killer. At the center is Halme squad, a relatively diverse group of detectives that share the spotlight. There is even an Enid Blyton moment as the cast is introduced one by one: their conflicts and quips are what drive the action, especially when the investigation hits a bump. Gads is surprisingly merciful to his cast: their weaknesses are not only humane but also hilarious. The IT guy is a desperate ladies' man. The single mother, previously a big-time business leader, is addicted to online video games. The latter has an affair with her daughter's football coach (goalie coach to be exact), who turns out to also be the coroner assigned to the case. It's funny and heartfelt, but doesn't take away from the book's overall mood.

My biggest gripe is stylistic. Gads plays it fast and loose with points-of-view and the effect is jarring at times. Most people won't mind, let alone notice, but when the story follows the police to an interview and the perspective suddenly shifts to the interviewee's point-of-view, it feels off. The focus is deservedly on the police, so a shift into someone else's thoughts sticks out. Also, chapters focusing on the police are interrupted by someone visiting a shrink and the musings of the killer. Combining so many voices in one book strains the reader's attention. It's a minor annoyance in an otherwise exciting book.

Gads is clearly laying the groundwork for a follow-up. In addition to the (relatively minor) twist ending, there is a lot left to unpack within the squad itself. Sergei, a Finn with a Russian name and a history of working the eastern border, is perhaps the prime candidate for a continuation. Novel characters are hard to come by, especially in police thrillers that tend to rely on familiarity for effect.

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

Where would we be without Michael Lewis? Few authors can claim their work to contribute as much to the global vocabulary on finance, sports and analytics. Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys and, now, The Fifth Risk have become shorthand for step changes in their respective industries. You can't talk about the 2008 financial crisis without talking about The Big Short and any conversation about sports analytics is bound to mention Moneyball. In addition to these landmark books, Lewis has also written the best outsider's view of behavioral economics (The Undoing Project) and recorded one of the best non-fiction podcasts of 2019 (Against the Rules). I've reviewed Lewis several times on this blog already, but I can't help feeling a little giddy everytime I see a new release from him. He's just that good.

The Fifth Risk, a look into three misunderstood US federal agencies, is not teeming with fascinating characters like The Big Short and doesn't evoke the same warm feelings as The Undoing Project, but it does leave you with a genuine sense of bewilderment and disbelief. In a telltale anecdote, a US presidential candidate singles out The Department of Energy as one of the governmental agencies that he would close if elected. But what exactly does the DOE do? With a budget of over 20 billion dollars, it must be an example of government waste, goes the thinking. The DOE is, in fact, in charge of maintaining the country's nuclear material and weapons, a task that any presidential hopeful is likely to applaud. Throughout the book, Lewis shows how an orthodoxy of small government has blinded us to some of the obviously good and necessary work being done within it.

The Fifth Risk - explained as the risk that comes from neglecting unlikely long term risks like nuclear accidents - is split in three sections, each of which addresses a different governmental agency: the aforementioned DOE, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. Unlike most of Lewis's books, the characters don't transcend their roles and are confined to individual sections. It's my only squabble. The Fifth Risk reads more like three excellent pieces of investigative journalism than a fully realized book. I first read parts of the DOE chapter in Vanity Fair (and loved it!), but The Fifth Risk takes the story only a bit further.

As with Lewis's work in general, there are multiple levels here. The Trump administration's disinterest in actually running the government is the obvious starting point. It's only the surface. In a concise 200 pages, Lewis addresses many of the ails of the modern United States. Politics is untethered from reality and policitcians are unable to perform some of government's most rudimentary functions. Blatant cronyism has suddenly become acceptable. "The free market" is expected to right wrongs that are clearly beyond its control. Somehow, freewheeling fools and disingenuous charlatans are given government positions that they barely understand. The whole polity is obsessed with regime affiliation, and so on.

It's a grim read with black humor that would make for a great Cohen brothers movie. The Fifth Risk is, among many other things, a reminder that details matter. It's easy to deal in imperatives and principles. It's much harder to gain a genuine understanding of an issue and work years to address it. It's a critique that is first directed at a number of political movements in the Western world - the Republicans, populist Europe, modern monetary theory - but it's not limited to them. Understanding and working with dirty details is perhaps the best vaccination against tribalism and government dysfunction.