Review: 'Escape from Sunset Grove' by Minna Lindgren

Title: Escape from Sunset Grove

Author: Minna Lindgren

Book: The Lavender Ladies Detective-Agency #2

Publisher: PanMacmillan

Year: 2017

Pages: 403

IBSN-13: 978-1-4472-8938-8

Price: 9.22€ paperback (Amazon)

Mark: 8/10

SYNOPSIS

Change is afoot at Sunset Grove retirement home, and the residents aren’t impressed.

Under thread from falling masonry, best friends Irma and Siiri are forced out of their home to negotiate twenty-first-century living in the center of Helsinki. Their new surroundings throw up an endless number of daily challenges, from caring for the ailing Anna-Liisa to the mystery of which of the many remotes controls the TV.

The pair are joined by growing numbers of friends in their flat-share, and their new close-quarters living raises some unexpected questions. As the Lavender Ladies begin to dig a little deeper, they find themselves following a trail of corruption, deceit and intimidation that might just lead them to their own front door…

The Lavender Ladies must steel themselves for what is set to be their most dangerous case yet.

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT

JUSTIFICACIÓN

I bought this book in Helsinki. I was looking for a book written by a Finnish writer and they didn’t have any book by Arto Paasilinna in English, so I asked the bookseller and she told me that this book was written by a Finn and that it was a best-seller. Besides, it was the only left on the bookshop, so I decided to buy it. When I read the blurb, it convinced me that this book was going to be a very interesting and enjoyable. And indeed, it was. I always enjoyed mysteries books, but this was of another sort. The detectives were old ladies, over nineteen years old! It was different, entertaining and funny, Finnish humor of course. This is a kind of black humor, but so much different as the type we are used to, but once you get in touch with it, it bewitches you.

PLOT

In the residence for the elderly Sunset Grove it has started a retrofit in order to modernize the plumbing of the building. But what it started as a three-months easy work, ends up in a complex work that lasted more than the double, involving the tear down of walls and asbestos dust flowing in the air. Some of the residents’ fear for their health and decided to start up a comune of elders. For that, the two grannies Siiri and Irma look for a cheap-rental-apartment. Unable to find one, they share their idea with Anna-Liisa and her husband, Onni or The Ambassador. Onni told them that he owns flats throughout Helsinki and that they can use one of them as the house-comune. They also invited Margit, an older woman obsessed with euthanasia as her husband is at death’s door suffering from dementia. Besides, during the retrofit, the Anna-Liisa’s jewelry box disappears in the middle of the chaos of the remodeling, a job done by a murky company who employs people that do not speak Finnish. They struggle to survive in the twenty-century Helsinki, dealing with the technology, the new society and the mysteries involving the retrofit, whose answer may be closer than they imagine...

CHARACTERS

As this is the second book a trilogy, I am going to talk about two secondary characters who has a relevant role in the books.

·         Margit: is a “young” -as far as it can be- woman. Younger than the rest as she is sixty-something, if I remember it correctly. She came relatively recently to Sunset Grove; her husband suffers from dementia and he is in SquirrelsNest. She spends almost all the book complaining about how her husband is suffering. She raises a debate about euthanasia, if we should let our beloved ones suffer until they die or help them to do not suffer anymore. She is a quite interesting well-constructed character that is on the second level, but she is gist to the development of the story.

·         Onni or ‘The Ambassador’: he is the husband of Anna-Liisa. They call him ‘The Ambassador’ because he worked as ambassador and has so many important positions in the government. He is an enigmatic character that held a secret involving the retrofit of Sunset Grove and about many illicit shenanigans. Little by little, as the story develops, his personality uncovers, revealing that huge mysterious around his persona.

ATMOSPHERE

As a person who has been living in Finland, and travelled a lot to Helsinki, I knew almost every street, park, shop, she mentions in the book, so it was quite easy for me to immerse in that world. Also, Fins have a special character so if you don’t know them, it is hard to comprehend how they act or think. I know that for somebody who is not acquaintance with Fins and Finland would find hard to understand them. Of course, that does not mean that you would not enjoy the book as the unforeseen incidents that happen are enjoyable and funny to anybody!

WRITING STYLE

It is an easy-going writing style, maybe the story is written in a bit slow pace, but that not break the succession of the story. Minna writes in that characteristic style of the scandinavian mysteries, however lighter, as it is not a mystery at all but a succession of funny-unexpected events with a mystery background.

GENERAL COMMENT

I must admit that I started reading this, the second part of the trilogy, and I fell so much in love that I had to buy the first book. On the blurb it says that it is the ‘Finnish Miss Marple’ so I expected some kind of Agatha Christie mystery book. As I read the book it started to fade that idea of my mind and was gradually replaced by the delight of this subtle mystery mixed with the happenings and difficulties concerning five older people and their new life in the twentieth-century Helsinki(world). It mixes fun with gloom, and at the end of the book you see yourself think ‘shit, how I cherish this book and these adorable grannies’.

-Saru