The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen (EXCERPT)

We have a fun excerpt for you this week, readers, as we dive into a comic take on your usual Scandinoir crime thriller. Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston, this darkly funny novel is the perfect balance of thrills, twists and laughter.

Middle-aged Anni Korpinen is the top salesperson at Steam Devil. She’s worked there for over two decades and has successfully burnished her reputation with her customers. Her co-workers are competitive, but that’s almost to be expected in the never-ending grind of sales. Her personal life is less of a source of pride — her marriage is perfunctory and the rest of her interests equally humdrum — but at least she has the prospect of climbing up the corporate ladder to look forward to.

Unfortunately, this plum position also makes her prime suspect after her former boss Ilmo Räty is found murdered in the sauna. When Anni realizes that someone is framing her for murder, she’ll have to pull out all the stops in order to stay ahead of both the police and the real killer.

Read on for an exciting preview from this comic Scandinoir crime thriller, detailing the dreadful crime before introducing us to our intrepid investigator!

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PROLOGUE

Aaaaahhhhhh.

The steam spread over his skin like a hot, damp blanket and flowed evenly and satisfyingly slowly across his whole body, first his back and flanks, of course, which made his ears tingle, then gently squeezing his calves. Ilmo Räty concluded, once again, that having a sauna by yourself certainly had its benefits. It allowed you to concentrate, to throw as much or as little water on the stones as you wanted, to sit on the bench for as long and for as many times as you liked, and simply to enjoy the sacred, holistic experience that was … the sauna.

And that’s exactly what he had been doing for over an hour. He had just returned from a short dip in the lake to cool off – his third that evening. The lake was still and pleasantly warm, and the flicker of the fire chamber lit up the sauna like a lantern. He had added a few more logs, just enough to keep the temperature at a steady 80°C.

The shorter, darkening August evenings were made for bathing in the sauna, for bathing was exactly what this was, in every sense. In the old days, before running water, the sauna was considered a bathhouse – an almost holy place where families would come together and spend time washing themselves.

Right now, however, his thoughts were racing, galloping far beyond the confines of the sauna, which was, perhaps, understandable. He was about to be appointed CEO of the company. He had to admit, even he had been a little taken aback by the announcement.

That spring hadn’t exactly been the finest period of his life.

His wife, Saija, had left him after he’d had a foolish dalliance at a skiing resort. The affair with a skiing instructor considerably his junior had ended with him learning to ski and the skiing instructor learning that after a hard day’s skiing a man in late middle age doesn’t have the energy for both dancing and romance. Not for more than a week, at any rate. To cap it all off, his adult children weren’t speaking to him because they had heard from their mother that he had sent the skiing instructor (who was their age) a series of high-resolution photographs of his penis. They baulked at his explanation about the fateful combination of drink and impotence drugs taken at the wrong time – it was a whim, a moment of madness – and now they considered him just a dirty old man. All this meant that he’d had difficulty concentrating, difficulty sleeping, difficulties in general. But despite this – he was the chosen successor, and soon…

Why was his bottom suddenly tingling and tightening? The steam couldn’t get underneath him; and when he had sat down, the wood had been damp. Now it felt as though the bench had been replaced by a stove, and he was sitting on the red-hot stones, as though the stones themselves were on fire. He had to stand up…

The pain was the same as if something had exploded within his skull, as though every nerve ending had shattered into a thousand separate parts. He couldn’t stand up, he was unable. It wasn’t possible. He was … stuck to the bench. How could this have happened?

And what was that noise coming from the changing room? He recognised the sound. Someone was taking logs out of the box then slamming the lid shut. The door into the sauna opened, and in walked…

The intruder, who was wearing a tight-fitting black outfit, complete with balaclava, turned directly towards the stove, opened the hatch and began piling fresh logs into the fire chamber.

Ilmo Räty asked what this was all about and again tried to stand up. Still to no avail. His buttocks and the back of his thighs were glued tight, perhaps even melted into the wooden bench. He thought – in fact, he was sure – that his superglued backside and the intruder putting more logs into the stove must somehow be linked. The intruder closed the stove’s hatch with a clank, slipped out of the sauna and pressed the door firmly shut.

Ilmo Räty started to shout. First in an enquiring tone, then more stridently.

The logs in the fire chamber got to work. The temperature began to rise – and rise. The stove rumbled like a forest in a storm.

The intruder returned, added more logs, then left again. Ilmo Räty had been in the sauna-stove business for almost ten years. He bathed several times a week. He knew a great deal about the effects of the sauna, both mental and physiological. He knew saunas were a clean and safe space – so much so, women used to give birth in them. But right now, that knowledge did little to calm him down; quite the opposite. He knew what lay ahead. And that’s why he had to make at least some effort to resist.

The next time the figure in black stepped inside (by now, all Ilmo could see was a blur), he hurled the water ladle towards the door, managing to strike the intruder right in the forehead. But this did not stop the intruder, who once again filled the fire chamber with logs and left. But not immediately, not before wagging a reproachful forefinger at him.

That gesture! He knew it from somewhere.

He was certain of it. One last time, he tried to focus his gaze, but it was impossible. Then he remembered.

That finger!

Now he knew who the intruder was, who had adhered his backside to the bench, and who had wagged a finger at him. At times he was unconscious, at times awake. The latter began to feel the stranger of the two. He thought to himself that somewhere there must surely be someone else who had sent penis pictures to his skiing instructor, then taken a 150-degree sauna and survived, but the idea began to feel increasingly improbable. He wasn’t sure whether he was imagining it or whether the sauna door did open, and the figure dressed in black did stand in the doorway one last time. Then the door closed. And it was closed regardless of whether he had imagined it being opened or not.

Ilmo Räty thought of the intruder again.

The thought surprised him.

Because now he knew why this had happened, why he was enjoying his sauna for the last time.

Why the temperature was continuing to rise.

In this sauna and in many other saunas too.

1

I steered the car into the lay-by and stepped out.

It was a warm morning, August still in full bloom. There were only a few scattered strips of cloud in the sky, gentle white brush strokes far away along the horizon; another sweltering day to add to the week and a half of sweltering days that had just passed. I had driven a hundred kilometres, and there were about another three until I arrived at my destination. I was well ahead of time, and there was a good reason why.

Sixty-four hand-crafted wood-burning sauna stoves. It was a lot. Perhaps not in the grand scheme of things, perhaps not for factories that churn out mass-produced stoves, but for us, and for me, this order was a big one; it could even be make-or-break. Above all, it felt like a reward, because I’d been laying the groundwork for this deal since early spring.

I took a deep breath. The forest still smelt of summer, of blossoms, greenery and life.

I had plenty of experience of situations just like this one, and I don’t think I’d misread the signals; I was certain that today we would finally seal the deal and place that order.

I was fifty-three years old, and I’d been selling handmade sauna stoves for twenty years. I’d met this potential customer several times, and as far as I could tell we understood each other’s needs. I was intimately acquainted with every stage of the manufacturing and retail process, right from the original stove design to the bliss of bathing in the steam, from the initial brochures to closing the deal. Sometimes it felt as though I understood stoves better than anything else in my life.

I’d sold more stoves than anyone else in the history of Steam Devil, with the exception of the company’s founder, Erkki ‘The Stove King’ Ruusula. I’d been able to match any and all offers made by our competitors – on both price and quality – and had gained people’s trust one week, one phone call, one email at a time. And when, two weeks ago, I’d made another short phone call and asked if I could come and visit the site again, I was welcomed in the warmest of terms.

I watched a group of birds fly from one dark-green edge of the forest to the other. They crossed the marshlands quickly and effortlessly; they didn’t have to worry about getting themselves stuck in the boggy ground. It didn’t seem like a bad way of approaching my own situation.

I filled my lungs with the forest’s fragrance one last time and felt better than I had done in a long while.

I returned to the car and started driving.

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From The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission.

The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen was published today April 29th by Orenda Books and is available from all good booksellers, including