Leena Lehtolainen est une romancière policière finlandaise, célèbre pour sa série captivante mettant en scène la policière Maria Kallio. Ses récits sont reconnus pour leurs intrigues complexes et leurs perspicacités psychologiques aiguës sur les personnages. Lehtolainen explore des relations humaines complexes et des dilemmes moraux dans le cadre d'enquêtes criminelles. Son style d'écriture est concis et engageant, entraînant le lecteur au cœur des mystères qui se dévoilent.
Il y a deux ans, j'étais garde du corps. Puis ma boss a été assassinée. J'ai traqué son meurtrier. C'est là que je l'ai rencontré, lui. David Stahl. Agent double à la solde d'un magnat du pétrole. Un James Bond déchu. Et puis il a disparu. Il a filé alors que je devais le rejoindre. A moins qu'on l'ait enlevé. Ou qu'il soit mort. Encore une fois. Tout ce que j'ai pour le retrouver, ce sont trois indices, qui m'ont menée à un vieil ennemi. Et à mon passé.
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?
After surviving a terrifying assault during her last investigation, Maria Kallio traded in her badge for a comfortable desk job. But when the head of social affairs for the Finnish Athletics Federation is murdered, the victim of an apparent poisoning, Maria is drawn back into a race against more than murder. A series of crimes has unfolded, and to Maria's trained eyes, they look like the makings of a conspiracy. As Maria follows the track to a doping scandal, a money-laundering scheme, domestic abuse, and explosive death threats leveled against a sports reporter, she collects the pieces of a baffling puzzle. Now, to run down the killer and save the next victim, all she has to do is make them fit. So far only one thing is for certain: Maria Kallio is rediscovering the thrill of the chase.
Professional bodyguard Hilja Ilveskero will do anything to protect her client. But when that client is the daughter of a nefarious real estate tycoon who is the mortal enemy of Hilja’s true love, things get complicated. She knows there must be an endgame to this job, but the pay is just too good to refuse.As Hilja learns more, mysteries begin to unravel, and dark crimes targeting the most vulnerable of victims come to light. Hilja must do everything in her power to protect enemies, loved ones, and innocents alike.From bestselling Scandinavian crime writer Leena Lehtolainen comes the final gripping installment of The Bodyguard series.
"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."--Provided by publisher
A group of hate crimes, a conspiracy, or a coincidence? Investigator Maria Kallio searches for answers close to home in award-winning author Leena Lehtolainen's riveting thriller. 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. When the body of a fourth girl is found in the snow, strangled with her own headscarf, the investigation takes on a grim new urgency. Is there a xenophobic serial killer on the loose? A random white nationalist? Or does something more insidious bind the girls? In a Finnish city struggling to assimilate a new population of Muslim immigrants, the answers are hard to come by... One thing is certain: it will take a detective familiar with the darkest depths of humanity to sift through the wreckage of clashing cultures in search of the truth. That detective is Maria Kallio.
After months of maternity leave, police detective Maria Kallio is ready to return to work. But before assuming her new post as head of the Violent Crime Unit, she learns that her ex-boyfriend Harri had mysteriously fallen to his death on the island of Rodskar. On the anniversary of that event, Harri's boss loses his life on the same rocks. Kallio searches for the link between these two tragedies and is soon convinced that they weren't accidents -- they were murders.
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.
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
After a student choir's practice session at a Helsinki villa turns deadly, Detective Maria Kallio finds herself in the middle of the action -- and her first murder case. Someone in the group wanted playboy Tommi Peltonen dead, but that's one song these suspects refuse to sing. Behind the choir's jovial facade lies bitter passion, and the victim's seemingly perfect life hid a host of sins that made him a target of almost everyone in the villa. As a young female -- and a redhead to boot -- Maria knows that solving this case will help her overcome her perceived shortcoming in the eyes of her colleagues. But as the case takes startling twists and turns, and friends and foes become interchangeable, will she be able to piece together the clues before the killer strikes again?
