Book of the month 2008

© Eichborn

In 1974 in Finland a young girl is raped and subsequently killed by a paedophile, condoned by another paedophile friend of his who witnesses the crime. Only a cross by the roadside reminds people passing by of what happened back then. 31 years later another young girl disappears exactly at this cross, and the as yet unsolved first case becomes the focus of the police again.

The German newspaper Die Welt casually titled Das Schweigen (The Hush) as a final spurt, which is definitely more to the point than to describe it as a detective story. In Das Schweigen every protagonist has its own final spurt. Recently retired investigator Ketola sees his chance to clear up the perhaps most brutal case in his police career. His colleague, Kimmo Joentaa, looks for a way to come to terms with his wife’s cancer death in the conversation with the parents of the missing girls. But Timo Korvensuo has the real final spurt. It was his silence during and after the rape and murder that allowed him to live his successful middle-class life with a job, a wife and their children. His life threatens to get out of control as he sees the news about the new missing girl on television.
Jan Costin Wagner (besides Germany he spends half of his time in Finland, and is apparently not a friend of too many words) focuses on the soul and the feelings of his characters, who all have their own motives in dealing with this mysterious case. What is explicitly said by the characters deals mainly with the investigation; what they feel is just slightly hinted at, for example in an oppressive scene, in which widower Kimmo Joentaa visits the mother of the girl killed in 1974 in order to question her. In their conversation, ostensibly about the disappearance of another girl, the question of how different people deal with the loss of their family is the unspoken sub-topic.
The only one who does not have his final spurt is the murderer himself, which certainly does not provide the satisfaction of moral integrity, which readers of a detective story would desire. But it makes the novel realistic, and in any case, the choice of providing a story about rape und murder with a neat ending would be questionable, too. In Wagner’s books the evil side of humans is exciting and entertaining for the reader, but it is neither banalised nor treated as a taboo. As the reader you get close – and maybe too close for comfort – to the soul of a paedophile rapist. What remains after finishing the book is the awareness and the ambiguous feeling that evil is not always revenged, is often closer than you know, and is sometimes even present within your own immediate circle.

Das Schweigen (published in 2007) is the sequel to the author's second book Eismond of 2005, which also features crime investigator Kimmo Joentaa. Eismond has already been translated and is internationally known, while Das Schweigen, too, will soon be published in English.

Jan Costin Wagner will be a guest at this year's Franco Irish Literary Festival, 18 and 19 April.

PS