The Maria Kallio Series

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.

After solving her first murder and leaving the Helsinki Police Department behind, Maria Kallio thought that a move to the neighboring city of Espoo would signal a fresh start - a chance to not only put her new law degree to use but to nurture her budding romance with Antti Sarkela. But when she discovers the strangled body of a new acquaintance, old habits die hard for the redheaded sleuth - especially since the accused is not only the victim's fiancé but a member of Antti's family. Though she works as a legal counselor, Kallio soon finds herself unofficially investigating the murder, now labeled a sex crime.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 longer: her infatuated bodyguard, a suicidal TV producer, and a talk-show host with political aspirations.

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.

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.