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    Helsinki Blood (Inspector Vaara Series #4)

    Helsinki Blood (Inspector Vaara Series #4)

    3.5 4

    by James Thompson


    eBook

    $9.99
    $9.99

    Customer Reviews

      ISBN-13: 9781101609293
    • Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
    • Publication date: 03/21/2013
    • Series: Inspector Vaara Series , #4
    • Sold by: Penguin Group
    • Format: eBook
    • Pages: 352
    • Sales rank: 106,804
    • File size: 630 KB
    • Age Range: 18 Years


    James Thompson, eastern Kentucky-born and –raised, has lived in Finland for more than a dozen years; he now resides in Helsinki with his wife. His debut novel, Snow Angels, was selected as a Booklist Best Crime Novel Debut of the Year and was nominated for Edgar®, Anthony, and Strand Magazine critics awards. Before becoming a full-time writer, Thompson studied Finnish—in which he is fluent—and Swedish, and worked as a bartender, bouncer, construction worker and soldier. His other Inspector Vaara novels are Lucifer’s Tears and Helsinki White.

    What People are Saying About This

    From the Publisher

    Praise for HELSINKI BLOOD
     
    “James Thompson's prose blend of chilly Scandinavian atmosphere and dark Southern Gothic is unique and jolting, like an ice-cold straight razor slashed across sweaty flesh.  In Helsinki Blood there are equal measures of violence, detection, pathos, blood . . . and finally, sweet redemption.”—C.J. Box, New York Times Bestselling Author of Force of Nature and Breaking Point
     
    “Finnish noir is the current tone of Thompson’s series . . . readers who are already invested in this character ache to see him succeed. Just the fact that Thompson can make the situation believable and make us care is evidence of his talent.”—Library Journal
     
    Helsinki Blood is as dark and bracing as a Nordic winter . . . Kari Vaara blasts other maverick cops out of the (icy) water.”—M. J. McGrath, author of White Heat and The Boy in the Snow
     
    “I can’t get enough of this author. No one writes noir better, Nordic or otherwise.”—Leighton Gage, author of Blood of the Wicked
     
    “Inspector Kari Vaara’s latest nightmare barrels along at a breakneck pace as he faces enemies on his doorstep as well as his own demons within. James Thompson’s spare, no-frills action is straight to the point. Helsinki Blood as raw as it gets, it doesn’t pause for breath and it and takes no prisoners.”—Quentin Bates, author of Frozen Assets and Cold Comfort

    "Compelling...Thompson draws on his long residence in Finland to convincingly portray a grungy northern underworld."—Publishers Weekly
     
    "Kentucky native Thompson has created in Kari a hero as dyspeptic as Kurt Wallender and as prone to vigilante justice as Harry Hole"—Kirkus

    Praise for JAMES THOMPSON:

    “In his dozen years of living in Finland, Kentucky born and-bred Thompson has absorbed enough cold, dark atmosphere for a spot on the roster of top Nordic crime writers—Mankell, Nesbø, Indriðason and the like.”—New York Post

    “A must-read for fans of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell.” —Booklist (starred review)

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    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.

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    Library Journal
    Finnish inspector Kari Vaara has been beaten down so thoroughly (after Helsinki White) that all bets are off as to his integrity or ability to handle the black-ops work his team has taken on. His wife has left him, but their baby is in Kari's care. Meanwhile, thugs are targeting him because of his last case, reminding him of his vulnerability. Once that problem is addressed, Kari agrees to help an Estonian woman find her kidnapped daughter, who has Down syndrome. Wading into the dismal morass of human trafficking, Kari's team goes vigilante. Clearly, there is no turning back. VERDICT Finnish noir is the current tone of Thompson's series, and his bleak and crushingly violent opening will put off some readers; I still miss the Kari of Snow Angels. But readers who are already invested in this character ache to see him succeed. Just the fact that Thompson can make the situation believable and make us care is evidence of his talent. [See Prepub Alert, 9/17/12.]
    Publishers Weekly
    Edgar-finalist Thompson’s compelling fourth Insp. Kari Vaara thriller (after 2012’s Helsinki White) shows the Finnish homicide detective to be not so much hard-boiled as deep-frozen, after suffering the loss of his emotions during brain tumor surgery and receiving bullet wounds to the knee and the jaw. His beloved wife, Kate, has left, taking their infant daughter, Anu, with her, while Kari self-medicates with a combination of painkillers and booze. Hoping to win Kate back by proving himself a latter-day knight errant, Kari undertakes a private missing-person investigation and limps into Helsinki’s murky white-slave trade with his assistants, Sweetness and Milo. Kentuckian Thompson draws on his long residence in Finland to convincingly portray a grungy northern underworld filled with neo-Nazis, intelligence spooks, and Russian mobsters, though the stomach-wrenching threats and violence from both bad and good guys culminate in a messy finale. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Mar.)
    Kirkus Reviews
    The violent soap opera of Inspector Kari Vaara's life continues as he and his mates scramble to mop up the consequences of their last round of well-intended thefts and executions. The top cop in Finland's National Bureau of Investigation has, by his own account, been "shot to pieces." Kate, the wife whose timely armed intervention saved his life in Helsinki White (2012), has succumbed to PTSD and gone off with their daughter Anu. Someone who knows that Kari and his colleagues stole €10 million from drug dealers is threatening him with increasingly lethal parcels tossed through his front window. Naturally, Kari calls the two people who helped get him into this mess, DS Milo Nieminen and police translator Sulo "Sweetness" Polvinen. Together with Milo's girlfriend, Jenna, and Sweetness' cousin Mirjami, they hunker down inside Kari's besieged apartment and wait for an excuse to go on the offensive against their old enemies: national police chief Jyri Ivalo, interior minister Osmo Ahtiainen, his hatchet man Capt. Jan Pitkänen and racist billionaire arms dealer Veikko Saukko. A pretext arrives when Estonian widow Salme Tamm reports her daughter Loviise missing. Since the girl's beauty and Down syndrome make her an obvious target for sex slavers, Kari and company promptly lean on the Harper brothers, casino keepers and pimps, to help them go after the usual suspects and incidentally recover Loviise. The mayhem that ensues owes less to other tales of Scandinavian cops than to samurai sagas and spaghetti Westerns, with a sequel guaranteed only for the last man standing. Though he doesn't have Henning Mankell or Jo Nesbø's gifts for shaping a story, Kentucky-native Thompson has created in Kari a hero as dyspeptic as Kurt Wallender and as prone to vigilante justice as Harry Hole.

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