Longanesi acquires Italian rights to Martta Kaukonen’s MEET ME IN THE DARKNESS!

We’re starting the week with fantastic news about Martta Kaukonen’s internationally bestselling Follow the Butterfly trilogy.

Following the announcement that German publisher Heyne acquired the rights to the upcoming third book FREE, we are thrilled to share that Longanesi has now acquired the Italian rights to book two, Meet Me in the Darkness!

Longanesi published the first book in the trilogy, Follow the Butterfly, this January with a great success! The book has sold over 20,000 copies and stayed several weeks on the bestseller list.

Follow the Butterfly has been sold to 16 territories!

Rights are available in, e.g., France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Spain, Romania…

Click here to request reading materials for FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY trilogy!

Book #1: Follow the Butterfly

Martta Kaukonen

Can she cure a killer? An addictive psychological thriller in the spirit of Gillian Flynn!

Ira, 20, a serial killer who was abducted as a child, starts therapy with celebrity therapist Clarissa. Only one of them knows that they share a mutual secret from the past. Will the other one realize it before she gets murdered?

Clarissa is a middle-aged psychotherapist, the best in her field. She is familiar to everyone from her TV appearances and from glossy magazines. For her, every patient is a princess. And someone only she can save. Or can she? Clarissa already has one suicide to answer for; a teenage boy’s death never seizes to haunt her.

When Ira becomes Clarissa’s patient, a cat-and-mouse game begins in which rules are followed by no one. The kind of game that never ends well.

Book #2: Meet me in the Darkness

Martta Kaukonen

Nothing is as it seems.

Four years have passed since the events of Follow the Butterfly. Ira and Arto have teamed up, and both work as crime journalists for the Helsinki Today. Everything’s going nicely, until Ira starts suspecting there’s a serial killer on the loose in Helsinki.

The murders are investigated by Senior Crime Inspector Kerttu Leppänen, who leads the murder unit and eagerly waits for retirement. Unsolved cases haunt Kerttu, who is unable to forgive herself.

The past catches up with all of them – if they were ever free from its clutches in the first place…

Book #3: Free

Martta Kaukonen

Is it worth digging up the truth?

It’s 1995. Detective Chief Inspector Kerttu Leppänen and her spouse, Inspector Esko Koivuvyö, are tasked with investigating the murder of a middle-aged woman. However, the crime scene presents a mystery that complicates the investigation: beside the body, there is a bloody knife on a pillow, even though it cannot be the murder weapon.

Thirty years later, Ira is determined to uncover the truth about her parents’ marriage. Why did her mother Marja fear her father Arto? And why does Arto refuse to answer Ira’s questions? Across different decades, Kerttu and Ira each come to the same realization: if you uncover the truth, you must be prepared to face its consequences.