After completing a dangerous mission training police officers in war-torn Afghanistan, Detective Maria Kallio returns to Finland as the head of a new special crimes unit. But what awaits her in her home country is her most challenging and unsettling case yet. Three immigrant Muslim girls, all members of the same social club, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances.
After surviving a terrifying assault, Maria Kallio traded in her badge for a desk job. But when an official for the Finnish Athletics Federation is murdered, Maria is drawn back into a race against more than murder.
A grievously mutilated young woman arrives at the hospital in Espoo, Finland—only to vanish without a trace. Though the victim refused to identify herself, Violent Crimes Unit Commander Maria Kallio suspects she’s connected to the city’s sex-worker underworld. The next day her suspicions grow when celebrity call girl Lulu Nightingale is murdered during a live television broadcast.
When a woman’s body turns up in a lake—a bullet to the back of her head—Violent Crime Unit commander Maria Kallio, freshly back from maternity leave, is fast to get on the case. But almost as soon as the inquiry starts, the investigation goes off the rails.
When Petri Ilveskivi is murdered in the street on his way to a city-planning meeting, Maria Kallio, commander of Espoo’s Violent Crime Unit, and her team are first on the scene. Almost immediately, her focus is on the band of skinheads who brutally attacked the Finnish commissioner and his husband three years earlier. Did they finally finish the hate crime they started? But the trail soon reveals a web of lies—secrets Petri was keeping from even those closest to him—and a long list of suspects.
After months of maternity leave, tough-talking Espoo police detective Maria Kallio is ready to return to work. But before assuming her new post, she vacations on the island of Rödskär, where she learns of a mysterious death. Soon another man loses his life on those very same rocks.
Former police sergeant Maria Kallio gladly left her tiny Finnish hometown of Arpikylä without looking back. But even though Maria despises the small town and the acrid smell from its now-closed copper mine, when Arpikylä’s sheriff asks her to serve as deputy sheriff for the summer, she agrees. But what should have been a quiet summer soon turns dramatic—and deadly.
After solving her first murder and leaving the Helsinki Police Department behind, Maria Kallio thought that a move to the neighboring city of Espoo would signal a fresh start. But when she discovers the strangled body of a new acquaintance, old habits die hard.
The first book in Leena Lehtolainen’s bestselling Finnish crime series starring Detective Maria Kallio, My First Murder offers hard-boiled realism from a female perspective.