2006-02-07 Jan Costin Wagner - Ice Moon

Kimmo Joentaa sits distraught by his bedside as his wife quietly passes away, victim of a long illness. After several days of mourning, despite the misgivings of his superiors (he is still visibly affected), Joentaa finally returns to work at Finland CID, and finds himself involved in a most eerie murder enquiry. A woman has been smothered in her sleep, and hers is not to be the first suspicious death by such chillingly tranquil and bloodless means. The young policeman, still riven with his own grief and new loneliness, finds a strange attraction in this case of quiet, gentle killing, and begins to feel a bizarre affinity for this killer. An affinity, he hopes, that will help Joentaa catch him.

Ice Moon, second novel from German Jan Costin Wagner (though set in Finland), is one of the most unusual I?ve read in a while. It consists of a split narrative ? chapters from the policeman, chapters from the killer ? which is a decidedly tricky conceit to pull off successfully, but Wagner certainly does it here. Some of the time spent in the mind of the bizarre killer is admittedly rather weird, but as a device Wagner uses these asides to crank up suspense far more effectively than many writers do ? by tracking the killers movements, we see how close to police come to catching their man. There are several classic suspenseful ?he?s behind you? (or rather, he?s right in front of you!) moments, though ? and this hardly needs saying - Wagner obviously does these far more subtly and powerfully than as if they were some raucous pantomime vignette.

This is by no means a conventional kind of crime novel ? there?s little aspect of ?whodunnit? (we know perfectly well) ? but what it is a suspenseful rumination on the nature of death. You?d think this would be pretty much usual fare for a crime novel, but not so: many crime novels tend to talk about death in a relatively off-hand way, tossing out clichés and platitudes left right and centre, but Ice Moon really seems to go right to the heart of the thing which makes a murder investigation: death, the act of someone dying. I can?t recall reading a crime novel that has come so close to looking at the actual mystery of dying before, and it?s a little unsettling to me (to think this isn?t done more often, I mean). It?s a very sensitive examination, an incredibly moving piece of work. The protagonist, Kimmo Joentaa, is superbly written and rendered, a marvellous character, and his reaction to his wife?s death is done powerfully and hauntingly.

Overall, it?s a sensitively written piece of literature, and a suspenseful and enjoyable crime novel. The symbolic nature of the final events (I can?t explain more for fear of spoiling) originally had me raising my eyebrows, before thinking, ?actually, that?s a little bit brilliant?. Wagner is clearly a crime writer with a lot of talent, and a nice slice of ambition to go with it, ambition to perhaps do different things with the genre, which I tend to admire above all things. Once again, more please.