An Inspector Vaara Novel Series

James Thompson’s incomparable Inspector Vaara is back in a new chilling Nordic mystery.

An Estonian woman begs Inspector Kari Vaara to find her daughter, Loviise, a young woman with Down syndrome who was promised work and a better life in Finland… and has since disappeared.

One more missing girl is a drop in the barrel for a police department that is understaffed and overburdened, but for Kari, the case is personal: it’s a chance for redemption, to help the victims his failed black-ops unit was intended to save, and to prove to his estranged wife, Kate, that he’s still the man he once was.

His search will lead him from the glittering world of Helsinki’s high-class clubs to the darkest circles of Finland’s underground trade in trafficked women and straight into the path of Loviise’s captors, who may be some of the most untouchable people in the country.

Inspector Kari Vaara, recovering from brain surgery, is back to doing police work—under circumstances most cops only dream of. Reporting directly to the national chief of police, Kari and his partners Milo and Sulo have been granted secrecy and autonomy for their new black-ops unit, and plenty of cash to work with, including whatever they can steal from Helsinki’s mobsters.But Kari’s team is too good, and their actions have unintended consequences…The president of Finland wants the team on a new case: the vicious assassination of a prominent immigrants’ rights activist. Against a backdrop of simmering hatred spreading across the country, Kari must solve a case that involves the kidnapping of a billionaire’s children, a Faustian bargain with a former French Legionnaire—and his own wife.

A Booklist Best Crime Novel Debut

“Don’t miss this one.”—USA Today
“A masterful job.” -Michael Connelly

It is called kaamos–two weeks of unrelenting darkness and soul-numbing cold that falls upon Finnish Lapland, a hundred miles into the Arctic Circle, just before Christmas. Some get through it with the help of cheap Russian alcohol; some sink into depression.

This year, it may have driven someone mad enough to commit murder. The brutalized body of a beautiful Somali woman has been found in the snow, and Inspector Kari Vaara must find her killer. It will be a challenge in a place where ugly things lurk under frozen surfaces, and silence is a way of life.