In the Name and Blood

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
Walden by Henry David Thoreau

After going through the first three seasons of Criminal Minds episodes once again, I stopped to think about something after seeing the title name for episode 3 of season 3 called "In Name and Blood." Around this time last year I read a book by a famous finnish crime fiction writer Ilkka Remes called In the Name and the Blood. Since I figured that the story of the book fits the mood for the season, with winter being almost over in most parts of the world already, I'd decided to finally talk about something in a blog.

After writing this so called review down, I noticed that I was talking alot more about the negative aspects of the story rather than the positives as I couldn't remember much of anything else, so if you're a die hard (half of a pun) fan of Remes, be warned.

Ilkka Remes is known for his writing style of adding international themes to his stories, which is true with this book also. The story is split into two parts; a murder case that's going on in Finland to what seems to be a "24" or "Die Hard" type of side story or a subplot in other countries, in this book there was only one main country linked to the story aside from Finland, which was Irak if my memory serves me correctly. I personally thought the way the two stories were weaved together was particularly poorly written. The story ends in a somewhat fanfictiony way that made me feel like I was wasting my time in the end. Around half of the ~460 pages of the book was, in my opinion, completely wasted on this international side story, making the read feel more frustrating than what it actually was (for the readers- I'm talking about the way the, what I'll call the Pandora's Box of the story, was handled with in the ending parts of the story, the part in the church).The climax of the book was very lackluster also as the reveal of the culprit was done in a rather calm manner and everything was resolved peacefully. None of the characters were particularly inspiring, fleshed out, had any interesting or memorable names or quirks or were developed in a decent way. No, they were normal people you'll see anywhere on most of the average TV-shows which In the Name and the Blood sort of did feel like with the way it presented its characters which is why I don't talk about the main character of the story, crime inspector Johanna Vahtera, that is. Anyways, some will appreciate the lifelessness (as in lack of outstanding personalities etc. for the characters), some won't. I guess it's one of the draws of Remes's writing style but I didn't really like it myself.

To change the mood from negative to positive for a second, I thought the book was well written in a way that it never felt boring or dragging when I tried to get into the story. It was well over 400 pages, four times longer than another novel I read just recently, but alot more entertaining. I can't recall actually wanting the story to end because of it being dragged or anything, it was more about the frustratement from reading a long, somewhat poorly but still entertainingly written side story that ultimately felt like filler to make the book longer. So the entertainment value was definitely there.

Back to the negative aspects as time didn't gold my memories of this one for some reason. My main problem with the book is that the first five pages were written in a very hard-boiled fashion, with the characters going out to illegal hunting in the darkness of a winter night and slitting the throat of, if I remember right, a deer to get the blood from it and even taking that with them for some blood pastries later. The beginning felt like false advertising by the end of the book. It wasn't completely opposite with rainbows and sunshines or anything, but the writing style was something you'd find in most mass-producted stories I'd say. The [cold and sort of "fresh"] atmosphere after the first five pages was gone until the second murder about halfway through the story where the culprit gets away, where I got that feeling of dread and chilliness once more, but even so, now that I think about it, the murders were very uninspired and left open. It felt like Remes didn't feel like taking any risks, which is good if you want to avoid plot holes in your story, sure, but disappointing nevertheless.
 I'm not a veteran when it comes to mystery-crime-detective fiction, but I still felt like the story overall was just average. As in 5,5/10 average. +Extra .5 to the 5 for the entertainment value and a bit of smoothness with how the plot that was going on in Finland played out for a good chunk of that half of the story.

If you're interested in stories that don't require using your brain and just want to have an entertaining time, without having to deal with the author trying to write what may potentially be a complex, messy and pretentious story, go for it (Pia in her 10 year old blog post over here seems to agree with me on this matter of pretentiousness in some ways). Maybe you'll get a different type of feel to the story than I did.