Review: Priest of Evil by Matti Joensuu

In the middle of Helsinki is an invisible mountain called the Brocken, where lives a man who calls himself an Earth Spirit, conjuring a vision to destroy the world. We might call him a dangerous religious fanatic, dwelling in the bowels of the underground train system. But Matti Joensuu, a former police inspector who has clearly seen plenty of madness and evil, writes crime fiction like a dark fairytale. Subverting all the rules of the genre, his Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpää takes a background role to the characters he will come to investigate when a man goes under a tube train at rush hour, pushed by seemingly invisible hands. We are soon drawn into the minds of the Earth Spirit and those of his prey: a tortured writer with an abusive past; his lonely son unwittingly following the same trajectory; a lumpy adolescent girl who dreams of being Tinkerbell; an unborn child. As these disparate souls are drawn together, Harjunpää's race to reveal the true identity of the tube killer becomes truly terrifying. A work of outstanding originality.