Loukko by 
We asked our rising star author Max Seeck, author of The Angels of Hammurabi, to give us a flavour of his most memorable reads – titles that have stayed with him and also influenced his writing.
“I try to keep up with the times and read a book a week. I don’t always succeed, but overall I manage to read quite a lot.
Most recently, I’ve read the Finlandia Prize-winning book, Watercolours of Engel’s City by Jukka Viikilä; Marko Lönnqvist’s My Life as a Gangster; Bryan Cranston’s A Life in Parts; and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.
Here are some of the books that have particularly inspired me:
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy
Crime as a genre really opened up to me in 2008, when I first laid my hands on a copy of the first instalment of the trilogy.
Animal Farm by George Orwell
I read this as a youngster; it left me with enduring questions about the use of power and how status can change the individual.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
An exceptional book about basic human needs, and ghosts from the past.
The Bat by Jo Nesbø
I remember thinking to myself that nobody had written anything like this before. A broken, alcoholic detective with a plot full of surprises and multi-dimensional characters.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Perhaps the thriller of all thrillers, which has everything in it: a chilling point-of-departure, every character a suspect, and an entirely unexpected twist at the end.”
