The Rabbit Factor
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- 7,99 $US
Description de l’éditeur
An insurance mathematician's carefully ordered life is turned on its head when he unexpectedly loses his job and inherits an adventure park ... with a whole host of problems. A quirky, tense and warmly funny thriller from award-winning Finnish author Antti Tuomainen.
**Soon to be a major motion picture starring Steve Carell for Amazon Studios**
'Laconic, thrilling and warmly human. In these uncertain times, what better hero than an actuary?' Chris Brookmyre
'The funniest writer in Europe, and one of the very finest. There is a beautiful rhythm and poetry to the prose ... original and brilliant story-telling' Helen FitzGerald
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Just one spreadsheet away from chaos...
What makes life perfect? Insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen knows the answer because he calculates everything down to the very last decimal.
And then, for the first time, Henri is faced with the incalculable. After suddenly losing his job, Henri inherits an adventure park from his brother – its peculiar employees and troubling financial problems included. The worst of the financial issues appear to originate from big loans taken from criminal quarters ... and some dangerous men are very keen to get their money back.
But what Henri really can't compute is love. In the adventure park, Henri crosses paths with Laura, an artist with a checkered past, and a joie de vivre and erratic lifestyle that bewilders him. As the criminals go to extreme lengths to collect their debts and as Henri's relationship with Laura deepens, he finds himself faced with situations and emotions that simply cannot be pinned down on his spreadsheets...
Warmly funny, rich with quirky characters and absurd situations, The Rabbit Factor is a triumph of a dark thriller, its tension matched only by its ability to make us rejoice in the beauty and random nature of life.
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'Antti Tuomainen turns the clichÉd idea of dour, humourless Scandi noir upside down with The Rabbit Factor. Dark, gripping and hilarious ... Tuomainen is the Carl Hiaasen of the fjords' Martyn Waites
'The Rabbit Factor is a triumph, a joyous, feel-good antidote to troubled times' Kevin Wignall
'Finland's greatest export' M.J. Arlidge
'You don't expect to laugh when you're reading about terrible crimes, but that's what you'll do when you pick up one of Tuomainen's decidedly quirky thrillers' New York Times
'Tuomainen is the funniest writer in Europe' The Times
'Right up there with the best' Times Literary Supplement
'Tuomainen continues to carve out his own niche in the chilly tundras of northern' Daily Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Soon after actuary Henri Koskinen, the narrator of this rollicking tale of contemporary crime and punishment from Finnish author Tuomainen (Little Siberia), resigns from his job at an insurance company staffed with "functionally innumerate psychobabblers," his brother dies of an apparent heart attack, leaving him YouMeFun, an adventure park near Helsinki. ("A box of tin and steel, painted in garish red, orange and yellow, and almost 200 metres across, it was an eyesore, no matter which colour of tinted spectacles you used to look at it.") YouFunMe includes a monstrous mechanical rabbit, seven peculiar staff members, and an enormous debt to murdering loan sharks. Henri's math skills overcome multiple assaults by baddies and police alike, but his analytical powers melt when Laura Helanto, his fun house decorator, teaches him both business and mutual cost-benefit pleasures. Tuomainen neatly skewers the "positive team synergies" of today's corporate world as his hero, armed with the rabbit's broken ear, sets out to solve "a perfect equation" of love and money. Full of refreshing wit and wisdom, this comic departure from the usual Scandi noir is a treat.
Avis d’utilisateurs
Funny, inventive, a joy to read.
Antti has a great series of funny, well described characters in this enjoyable novel. I never lost interest and ended up reading it in 2 days. I’m glad to have discovered his books. Wonderful light engaging read and laugh out loud funny.
What a Ride!
At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this book but I stayed with it and was surprised by discovering I was enjoying it. What helped me to get a better understanding of the main character was when I gave him the persona of Jim Parson’s Sheldon of the Big Bang theory. Imaginative, to say the least. Funny too.