The Winter Warriors
by Olivier Norek
The best crime and thrillers of 2025
Norek, a popular French crime writer, has produced has a masterly evocation of the conflict between November 1939 and March 1940, when Finland almost fought off an ill-planned Soviet invasion. With most of the characters and all the incidents factual, this is a ‘novelisation’ of military history, a sub-genre that seems popular with French writers.
Norek takes as his main character Simo Häyhä, a simple countryman who happens to be an unbeatable sniper. He joins the army alongside a group of friends from his village, and the main thrust of the story concerns their experiences as they are forced into ever-more brutal battle. The incompetence of the Red Army means that at first Simo has to cope with an existence little different from that of a slaughterman. Later this changes utterly as the Soviets bring explosive bullets and flamethrowers into action. Fighting is exhausting in the endless snow, at temperatures so low that men must hug each other at night so as not to freeze to death.
Details such as the fact that Finland had only existed as an independent country for 20 years when the war began, and that the Russians were so confident as to send bandsmen into battle, have chilling parallels with the current Ukrainian war. With great skill and concision, Norek brings us into the hearts and minds of frontline soldiers, but also pulls back to include the Finnish Commander in Chief, Mannerheim, the Soviet foreign minister Molotov, and the morally bankrupt Soviet army, whose political officers can shoot their own men at will. All characters are effortlessly brought alive. Knowing that amidst such overwhelming odds not all of the Finns can possibly survive, the suspense gripped me. Grim, funny, poignant, always vivid, this is the best military novel I have read for a long time.
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