Translated from Finnish by David Hackston

The Beaver Theory is the third and final installment of the trilogy featuring Henri Koskinen, actuary cum adventure park owner who despite everything that happened in The Rabbit Factor and The Moose Paradox still believes that mathematics and logic will overcome all hurdles. (If you haven’t read books 1 and 2, I strongly advise you to so because you need to know the characters to appreciate the nuances in some of the relationships, particularly between Henri and his staff.)

In Book Three Henri faces three challenges:

1. Adjustment to family life: Henri, always a loner, becomes a family man, when he moves in with his lover, Laura Helantro and her daughter, Tuuli. This results in him becoming embroiled with an active, sociable and very demanding dad’s group, who are fund-raising to send the kids to Paris.

2. Aggressive competition in the form of Somersault City, the owners of which, by making everything free, want to wipe Henri’s park off the map. Their tactics are so successful that footfall at YouFunMe is reduced to zero.

3. Becoming prime suspect when the owner of Somersault City is found dead at the foot of the Beaver, Somersault City’s main attraction …. with a steel ice cream cone stuffed down his throat.

The third problem would have been avoided had Henri not decided to break into Somersault City one night to gather information about their business model. A puzzle if ever there was one to Henri’s mathematical brain. Once two fishy cops call to question him about the death, Henri realises that he will have to solve the murder himself to get off the hook.

Cue all kinds of chaos including a hooligan spray-painted blue, a snowmobile disappearing across snow-bound fields with a headless driver, and a saboteur trapped with millions of ants inside a giant banana. Lashings of black humour interspersed with surprisingly proficient dads tray-baking and jam-making as well as Henri’s staff putting it all on the line to save the park. I teared up at that point. I got exasperated with Henri when he (admittedly admirably) stuck to his determination to keep business and family separate, and did not share his troubles with Laura, becoming preoccupied and distant, thus jeopardising his new found happiness. But Laura’s art work is capable of performing miracles, and, in a welcome echo from The Rabbit Factor, her new commission is to thank for clearing Henri’s head, reeling from the fact that mathematics and logic are not riding to the rescue this time.

As for The Beaver Theory … there’s more than a little horseplay involved.

The series signs off happily for Henri, Laura and YouMeFun. Also for Detective Osmala, who can retire in good conscience now he has uncovered the police corruption he had suspected for a while. But not all loose ends are sewn up – whatever happened to Henri’s treacherous brother, Juhani, whose fake death initiated Henri’s adventures? I really wanted him to get his just desserts but he simply disappeared from view. Did I miss something or is there a spin-off novel in the offing?