The City of Espoo is being menaced by the “Biris” gang that steals designer clothing, phones, and jewelry from other youth. One night, one of the members is stabbed to death, in a case which seems clear. Maria’s unit is investigating while being threatened by a cut in funding.

Maria’s home feels empty as her children have left the nest. An acquaintance contacts Maria regarding sexual harassment, and Maria tries to help – but her intervention seems to make things worse. And as a boy goes missing from a children’s home and Biris threatens with revenge, Maria has her hands full.

Maria Kallio Series has sold over 2 million copies worldwide and been translated into 30 languages. The 15th book will surely catch one’s ear!

Maria Kallio is getting ready for her daughter’s graduation when her cat brings her a human ear. She takes it to the forensic lab and doesn’t think any more of it.

Maria and her team are assigned to investigate a rape of a young woman when things start to heat up. The accused rapist is a young man with an immigrant background, which causes a lot of racism and heated discussions in the papers and media. Angry fathers are organizing a street patrol to keep their daughters safe, and when Rahim is released from the police station, his safety is not guaranteed. Maria and her team are working to solve a new case, but online trolls are targeting them and doing everything to distract them. But when Maria is almost killed by an earless driver, it makes her wonder if all the harassment is related to the case, or could it be something more personal?

Rights sold:

FINLAND: Tammi (orig.)
GERMANY: Rowohlt

TV & FILM RIGHTS: MTV3/C More

A man is abducted at Helsinki airport and left to drown in a remote lake. He survives and a journey for answers begins!

#crime #revenge #espace #secretsfromthepast

Aino is a ranger, located at a distant corner of the Finnish wilderness. One day she finds a man fighting for his final breath. The man, Tomas, has been abducted at the airport, drugged, and abandoned to die. Aino saves his life, and when Tomas recovers, together they hope to find out what happened and why. Tomas learns that he has gotten involved in a murderous plot by bloodthirsty motorbike gang.

Do they stand a chance against their new enemies? Can they find a way out of the nightmare that someone else has started? Or is it time to break the oaths, made so long ago…

Rights sold:

FINLAND: Tammi (orig)

ESTONIA: Pegasus
LITHUANIA: BALTO

In The Killer’s Girlfriend, Lehtolainen delights the readers with short stories featuring the loved protagonists of her Maria Kallio and The Bodyguard books, but expands also into mystery and ghost stories. How does a librarian become a killer’s girlfriend? Is love stronger than death, and can a child have three fathers?

The capturing stories take their characters in unexpected situations and don’t let the reader off the hook.

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. Was the journalist about to reveal a bombshell that someone was desperate to keep quiet? Or will it take some reading between the lines? The clues may be few, but the list of suspects is long. As she struggles to balance her home life, run a department tainted by career-threatening allegations, and catch a killer, Maria is shocked to find just what someone was willing to do in the name of love…or revenge.

Book 14 in the bestselling Maria Kallio series. A female detective police procedural, The End of Innocence is also a study of young men’s fragile sexuality. Perfect for fans of Lynda La Plante’s DCI Jane Tennison series.

When a newly-released child molester is found dead in an abandoned playground, the case lands on Maria Kallio’s desk. As newly-appointed chief of the child & youth crime unit, Kallio finds herself with a highly sensitive homicide case on her hands, with suspects including the deceased’s victims and their relatives. A harrowing case for Maria, the mother of a teenage son herself, the novel examines whether we can survive abuse, and privacy in the age of the internet.

Rights sold:
FINLAND, Tammi
GERMANY, Rowohlt

When the 92-year-old textile industry magnate Lovisa Johnson offers Hilja a job as her bodyguard, she does not hesitate. The businesswoman lives in a mansion that’s rumored to be haunted, after all. Johnson is childless, but her grandnephews and -nieces – a doctor, an oil industry lobbyist, a security guard and a clairvoyant – are eager for their cut of the inheritance. A combination of a mansion mystery and a fast-paced thriller, the novel is an anticipated new entry in the series.

Rights sold:

Original publisher: FINLAND, Tammi
GERMANY, Rowohlt

The final installment of the trilogy can also be read as a standalone thriller. When uninvited guests show up at the wedding of a Finnish businessman and his Russian girlfriend for whom Hilja Ilveskero is working, an international mystery begins to unravel. Hidden truths are revealed, and soon Hilja comes face-to-face with an unthinkable tragedy from her childhood: the murder of her mother.

Rights sold:
Original publisher: FINLAND, Tammi
ARMENIA, Guitank
CZECH, Argo
FRANCE, Hachette (Book 1-2)
GERMANY, Rowohlt
HOLLAND, Unieboek (Book 1)
RUSSIA, Azbooka-Atticus
SPAIN, Destino
TAIWAN, Linking
TURKEY, Nemesis
WORLD ENGLISH, Amazon Crossing

Hilja Ilveskero is visiting her lover David Stahl in Italy, where he is hiding from a Belorussian mobster. After David suddenly disappears, Hilja is forced to return to Finland to work for her former client who owns a restaurant. When someone begins threatening the business, Hilja is drawn into a web of international crime.

The Lion of Justice was published in August 2011, and it immediately hit the top of Finland’s official bestseller list and the bestseller list of Adlibris, the biggest online bookshop in the Nordic countries!

Rights sold:
Original publisher: FINLAND, Tammi
ARMENIA, Guitank
CZECH, Argo
FRANCE, Hachette (Book 1-2)
GERMANY, Rowohlt
HOLLAND, Unieboek (Book 1)
RUSSIA, Azbooka-Atticus
SPAIN, Destino
TAIWAN, Linking
TURKEY, Nemesis
WORLD ENGLISH, Amazon Crossing

A thrilling trilogy with a complex female protagonist, New York-trained bodyguard Hilja Ilveskero.

In the first book, Hilja’s client conducting real estate business in Russia is killed, and she is suspected of murder. She sets out to prove her innocence – both to the authorities and to herself. Going underground, she soon realizes that someone is after her. Can she trust anyone, even the people closest to her – and what is the price of betraying, or saving, another person?

Rights sold:
Original publisher: FINLAND, Tammi
ARMENIA, Guitank
CZECH, Argo
FRANCE, Hachette (Book 1-2)
GERMANY, Rowohlt
HOLLAND, Unieboek (Book 1)
RUSSIA, Azbooka-Atticus
SPAIN, Destino
TAIWAN, Linking
TURKEY, Nemesis
WORLD ENGLISH, Amazon Crossing

The body of Jaakko Pulma, an antiques and diamond dealer, is found at the church of Tapiola near Helsinki. Whoever murdered him appears to also have stolen a set of priceless family diamonds. A former employee becomes the primary suspect, but the situation becomes more complicated when Pulma’s lost phone begins to send out messages. Maria Kallio and her colleagues soon receive tips of a money laundering operation.

A hunt for the missing diamonds leads the police into an international web of crime. Buried deep into Pulma’s history is evidence of blackmail and an accident that turns out to not have been one at all. Not even the police is safe in the final showdown. A hit song, A Stroke of Sadness, by a band called Starflower adds an unusual twist to the story.

Rights sold:
Original publisher: FINLAND, Tammi
GERMANY, Rowohlt

An intense drama set in the Finnish archipelago. Two bodies, a dead socialite, ghosts from the past, and a woman beaten to within an inch of her life. And Maria Kallio playing summer vacation widow with a handsome local cop.

Mari Kallio’s Special Crimes Unit is assigned to solve the mystery of two corpses wrapped in plastic found on the shore of tiny Brändö Island. The female victim is an impoverished former model and fiery defender of Swedish language minority rights, Saila Lind, who has enemies to spare. Nearby is a villa owned by a famous hockey star where Lind visited frequently.

Also sticking his nose into the case is local cop Jon Berg, whose appeal for Maria is increased by the rest of her family being on a sailing vacation abroad. As she investigates the identity of the other victim, alarming things float to the surface from Maria’s past. A serious assault in the family of the hockey player further complicates the situation.

Who will make it home to port alive?

Rights sold:
Original publisher: FINLAND, Tammi
GERMANY, Rowohlt