Copyright 2021 by Max Seeck. Published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
This edition was translated from the original Finnish. This is a problem because, as with most translations, the names of character and locations were not translated. So the main character is Yusuf Pepple. One of the murder victims is Eliel Zetterborg who lives on Laivasillankatu. Pepple’s colleagues are Jessica Niemi, Nina Ruska, Rasmus Susikoski and Jami Harjula. One of the suspects is Camilla Adlerkreutz. You get the idea – names in this book are a problem. Reading involves a constant struggle to mentally pronounce or to at least figure out who is being referenced as some of the names are very similar to someone who speaks English. Books that involve struggle are not fun.
The first murder – with several to follow – is the stabbing of Eliel Zetterborg, the fabulously rich CEO of RealEst, a Finnish manufacturing conglomerate – in his palatial condo in Helsinki. There are many suspects initially as he was widely despised, but the murderer was waiting for him inside his condo, with the alarm set, which narrows the suspect list greatly. Soon some clues appear that were clearly left by the murderer to taunt the police. Those clues lead to a deaf mute, the son of one of Zetterborg’s lieutenants. How he became a deaf mute eventually becomes a central question in the plot. It involves an incident that occurred 30 years earlier in a remote Finnish hunting lodge.
It is a well-crafted plot and there are several subplots that are also interesting. But I couldn’t get past the struggle in reading it.
3 out of 10.