Leena Lehtolainen – författare

Twenty-three-year-old law student Maria Kallio is recruited for a temporary position at the Helsinki police department. Sweet-faced but tough and hot-tempered, Maria faces pushback from her new squad—so when a young playboy is murdered at his family’s summer villa, the new detective is out to prove herself.

Found floating facedown at the water’s edge after a night of partying, Tommi Pelatonen appears to have been murdered by one of his closest friends—but why? As Maria discovers, bitter passion and jealousy seethe under the placid surface of the group’s privileged, carefree lifestyle. As Maria uncovers the victim’s unsavory secrets, motives for all seven suspects come to light. Now it’s up to her to untangle the clues before the killer strikes again.

The first book in Leena Lehtolainen’s international bestselling Nordic crime series starring Detective Maria Kallio, My First Murder serves up murder with a slice of life in the Finnish upper crust.

Leaving the Helsinki police force to put her new law degree to use, Maria Kallio is ready for a fresh start. But when she discovers a strangled body, old habits die hard for the redheaded sleuth—especially since the accused is related to her new boyfriend.

The police rush to close the case against the victim’s fiancé, but Maria is convinced they’ve got the wrong man and soon finds herself unofficially investigating the murder, now labeled a sex crime. To crack the case, Kallio will have to pull back the curtain on the secret dealings of Finnish high society…and uncover a secret someone is willing to kill to keep hidden.

Her Enemy, the second book in Lehtolainen’s international bestselling Nordic crime series, sends intrepid Detective Kallio to the dark side of human passion.

Noora Nieminen was destined to become a world champion. But when the sixteen-year-old skating sensation is found slain with her own skates, her promising career is unexpectedly cut short.

Detective Maria Kallio is seven months pregnant, but that isn’t going to stop her from putting everything she has into solving the murder. With a promotion on the line and her arrogant adversary, Pertti Ström, vying for the new job, Maria is determined to make an arrest. Could it be the deviant criminal who’s lately been terrorizing the city? Is it the former lover of Noora’s mother, who has been stalking the family since she rejected him? Or might the killer be someone even closer than that? With so much riding on Noora’s success—and so many people with motives to murder—the detective must sift through the long list of suspects before the case turns ice cold.

Death Spiral, the fifth book in Lehtolainen’s international bestselling Nordic crime series, is a chilling tale of hot tempers, high stakes, and the untimely death of a rising star.

When the well-known director of a women’s retreat center goes missing, Espoo Police Detective Maria Kallio is called to investigate. As the missing woman’s friends and family quickly become the pool of suspects, Maria must soften her tough interrogation style to uncover the information she needs to solve the crime. Meanwhile, a killer Maria put in prison escapes and sets out to take revenge. As the missing persons case—and Maria’s personal life—become increasingly complicated, the Espoo Police work to track down the escaped killer before it’s too late.

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.

What should have been a quiet summer soon turns dramatic—and deadly. Meritta, an outspoken local artist, plunges to her death from the copper mine’s tower, and Maria immediately suspects someone helped her fall. Now Maria must face the harsh truth that one of the town’s residents killed Meritta, and friends Maria has known for decades all harbor their own murderous motives—even Johnny, her gorgeous former crush who almost makes her forget about her long-distance boyfriend, Antti, who is studying in Chicago.

In this thrilling addition to the internationally successful Maria Kallio mystery series, the past and present of the beloved Finnish detective violently collide, leaving her future in grave danger.

After months of maternity leave, tough-talking Espoo police detective Maria Kallio is ready to return to work. But before assuming her new post as head of the Violent Crime Unit, she vacations with her husband and daughter on the island of Rödskär. There Kallio learns that, one year earlier, her ex-boyfriend Harri had mysteriously fallen to his death from the isle’s steep and treacherous cliffs.

On the anniversary of that event, Harri’s boss, the CEO of an allegedly nontoxic paint company, loses his life on those very same rocks. In light of such a coincidence, Kallio searches for the link between these two tragedies and is soon convinced that they weren’t accidents—they were murders. As the Finnish nights grow longer, so too does the list of suspects. Was the CEO’s disillusioned wife involved? His environmental-activist son? Or perhaps his rebellious daughter? Or might the culprit be his half brother, an adventurous sailor whom Kallio finds altogether a little too intriguing?

From internationally bestselling Finnish author Leena Lehtolainen comes the sixth book of the gripping Maria Kallio Mystery series.

As a professional bodyguard, Hilja Ilveskero rarely loses her cool. But one day, she and a client have an argument in a Moscow fur salon, and Hilja quits on the spot. When the client turns up dead, Hilja quickly discovers that she is a suspect. In an attempt to clear her name and find the killer, she uncovers ever-deeper layers of subterfuge. Amid all the covert treachery and intrigue, Hilja finds herself falling in love with a suspicious yet irresistibly sexy man—but is her heart clouding her judgment? In this tale of political romance populated by Russian oligarchs, Finnish politicians, and undercover cops, no one is what they seem and no one can be trusted. A fast-paced, tightly woven tale of love, murder, betrayal, and high-stakes deal-making, The Bodyguard—the first in a gripping trilogy by internationally acclaimed Nordic crime author Leena Lehtolainen—exposes the delicacy and dark underbelly of international relations on both a human and global scale.

A fierce detective risks everything to unravel a tangle of secrets and corruption protecting a killer in this spellbinding seventh mystery in the tension-filled Maria Kallio series.

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.

As she juggles her obligations as a wife, mother, and detective, Maria suggests to her superiors that what first appears to be a random assault may actually be something more sinister. When she''s met with silence and higher-ups take her off the case, she disobeys orders and investigates on her own, putting both her family and herself at risk. In this captivating tale in the Maria Kallio series, someone is protecting a killer. Can Maria track them down before the next victim falls?

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. The victim is ID''d as Annukka Hackman, wife of a prominent publisher and author of an upcoming unauthorized tell-all book on Sasha Smeds, Finland''s celebrated racing rally driver.

Almost as soon as the inquiry starts, it goes off the rails, as those connected to Annukka—and to Smeds—seem to have more secrets than they have alibis. Was the journalist about to reveal a bombshell that someone was desperate to keep quiet? Or will it take some reading between the lines? The clues may be few, but the list of suspects is long. As she struggles to balance her home life, run a department tainted by career-threatening allegations, and catch a killer, Maria is shocked to find just what someone was willing to do in the name of love—or revenge.

Award-winning author Leena Lehtolainen’s heart-stopping series continues as investigator Maria Kallio’s hunt for a killer gets dark, dangerous, and dirty…

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.

The victim’s clients included some of the top names in Finnish society, but the list of suspects is even longer: her infatuated bodyguard, a suicidal TV producer, and a talk-show host with political aspirations. But how is Lulu’s murder connected to the tortured woman’s disappearance?

As the body count keeps rising, Maria plunges into the dark demimonde of the sex trade. And this time, searching for answers may shatter all that she has.