The Liberator

Henning Mankell meets Stephen King! Arttu Tuominen’s unique human touch and excellence in depicting characters combined with shocking horror elements brings originality to Nordic Noir.

✓  Arttu Tuominen is a Palle Rosenkrantz Prize-winning and a Spiegel bestselling author! He was shortlisted for the Glass Key Awards 2021, a nominee Book Beat Finland’s Best Finnish Crime Author 2021-2023 and won the ‘Johtolanka’ Crime Novel of the Year Award 2020

✓  International success - River Delta series has sold to 7 territories!

Internationally bestselling author Arttu Tuominen delivers a new crime novel with a strong social conscience, taking readers into the Pori night in all its colourful lights and inhabitants, tattooing it on to the reader’s skin.

The charred body of a man is discovered on a sports field in Pori. The victim had been doused with petrol and set on fire. Suspicions are directed at a group of young adults known to have harassed rough sleepers in the past. When a second arson attack is caught on CCTV, the Pori police are forced to take the attacks seriously as rumours on the street talk of a ‘liberator’ offering the wretched eternal life and freedom from pain.

The investigation takes the police deep into the world of the marginalised: nocturnal streets, drug dens, forest camps, bridge underpasses, and night shelters. Detective Susanna Manner, who leads the investigation, has a secret: her son is a rough sleeper involved in a serious crime. Manner is faced with the impossible dilemma: to put her child or her job first?

THE LIBERATOR is the fifth book in the acclaimed ‘River Delta’ series, which has seen commercial success and garnered praise from readers and critics alike, both at home and abroad. Set  in the city of Pori by the Gulf of Bothnia, a Finnish police unit has to solve crimes that force them to consider their own acts and values. In turn, each of the officers of the unit is centered in the narration, having to face their own ghosts from the past. Each novel can be read as a standalone.