The Beaver Theory by Antti Tuomainen tr. David Hackston #blogtour #extract #TheBeaverTheory #RandomThingsTours #Orentober

Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove where it is my absolute pleasure to share with you an extract from The Beaver Theory! Check out my review here if you missed it the first time around, but the long and short of it is that it’s just utterly fantastic, this whole trilogy has been a wonderful bookish journey and I can’t recommend it enough.

Many thanks to Anne Cater for having me on the tour, and to Orenda Books for the excerpt.

Let’s have a quick look at the blurb first:

Can everyone’s favourite insurance mathematician, Henri, combine the increasingly dangerous world of adventure parks with the unpredictability of blended-family life? He’s about to find out in the final instalment of the hilarious, nail-biting Rabbit Factor Trilogy. Henri Koskinen, intrepid insurance mathematician and adventure-park entrepreneur, firmly believes in the power of common sense and order. That is until he moves in with painter Laura Helanto and her daughter… As Henri realises he has inadvertently become part of a group of local dads, a competing adventure park is seeking to expand their operations, not always sticking to the law in the process… Is it possible to combine the increasingly dangerous world of the adventure-park business with the unpredictability of life in a blended family? At first glance, the two appear to have only one thing in neither deals particularly well with a mounting body count. In order to solve this seemingly impossible conundrum, Henri is forced to step far beyond the mathematical precision of his comfort zone … and the stakes have never been higher…
Warmly funny, quirky, touching, and a nail-biting triumph of a thriller, The Beaver Theory is the final instalment in the award-winning Rabbit Factor Trilogy, as Henri encounters the biggest challenge of his career, with hair-raising results…

Ready? Okay, let’s find out what Henri is up to!

My route was new now. 

First I took the metro to Itäkeskus, where I had to change and get a bus. And eventually, I did just that, but only after missing the bus I had been planning to catch, which would have got me to the park in good time. I wasn’t in the habit of being late. Nonetheless, I decided to enjoy my new  surroundings and the slowly brightening winter’s morning as best I could. I reminded myself that I was unfamiliar with this route and that, these days, I seemed to be learning a great many new things.

When I finally got off the bus, I walked briskly, which wasn’t only to do with being in a hurry, the -10°C temperature or the north-westerly wind. I had taken the weekend off, and I wasn’t     in the habit of doing that either. I usually worked at the park one day over the weekend, but now I’d been off since Friday afternoon. Key to this decision was moving house, but so was an observation I’d made about three weeks earlier. My employees had all grown into their respective roles, and nowadays they took greater responsibility for shared matters too. One afternoon three weeks ago, I realised that the day-to-day running of the park didn’t require my constant oversight. Everything worked just as it should, things were taken care of, the employees did their work so well and so efficiently that I’d even considered giving them a pay rise and had reached the conclusion that this would happen as soon as our financial situation allowed it.

I crossed the road and continued across the snow-covered car  park. As I arrived at the main doors, I turned and looked back. It was a curious thing to do, and at first I couldn’t think why I’d spun around. I concluded it must have been from force of habit, a hangover from the time when I really did have to keep looking over my shoulder – for good reason. I looked at the car park a moment longer, judged it to be about as empty as on any median Monday, put my key in the door and stepped inside.

The aroma of fresh coffee and cinnamon buns hung in the air as I passed the Komodo Locomotive, the Strawberry Maze, the  Doughnut and all the other familiar activities and contraptions. Our newest and largest acquisition, the Moose Chute, stood in pride of place in the middle of the park, its antlers reaching up to diving-platform heights and its dark flanks gleaming like a small ship. Whether I was looking at the machines, the floor, the walls, or anything at all, everything I saw was clean, in places almost sparkling. I mentally thanked Kristian, whose responsibilities now included organising and overseeing the  park’s cleaning operation. The hall even smelt clean, which also explained why the aromas coming from the Curly Cake Café were so overwhelming.

There were still a few minutes until the start of our morning meeting. I reached my office, switched on my computer, pulled  up the documents and reports I needed and sent them to the printer. I glanced out of my second-floor window, adjusted my tie, grabbed the papers and walked into the conference room.

This was a new room, and it had come about at Kristian’s initiative. Among his many suggestions for how to improve and modernise the park, this one had stood out in that it was genuinely feasible. He had even put up the walls himself, separating the room from the rest of the storeroom. Our marketing manager, Minttu K, had taken care of the interior design, which mostly consisted of shiny white surfaces and black leather. In addition, two black bollards had been positioned in the corners of the room. Minttu K called them sculptures. I’d seen similar rooms in a futuristic horror film I’d ended up watching years ago after a series of misunderstandings regarding the technicalities of buying a ticket.

Much more to find out! Grab your copy directly from Orenda Books here!