Lucifer's Tears

Starred review from January 31, 2011
Thompson's stellar second thriller featuring Insp. Kari Vaara (after Snow Angels) finds Vaara working as a homicide detective in Helsinki, where he investigates the torture murder of Iisa Filippov. While Vaara suspects the victim's Russian husband, Ivan, he can't touch Ivan because the Russian is well connected within the police department. Vaara also looks into international accusations of war crimes against a Finnish national hero, 90-year-old Arvid Lahtinen, who allegedly executed Jews and other POWs at a secret Finnish stalag during WWII. But he soon learns that not only did his own grandfather serve in the same unit but the stalag is just one of the wartime secrets Lahtinen is hiding that are potentially embarrassing to the Finnish government. The arrival of Vaara's pregnant wife's brother and sister from the States doesn't make his home life easy. Thompson elegantly threads Finland's compelling national history with Vaara's own demons in this taut, emotionally wrought novel.

Starred review from January 1, 2011

Inspector Kari Vaara's success in cracking the Sufia Elmi murder (Snow Angels, 2010) wins him a transfer from the sticks to Helsinki, below the Arctic Circle but just as hospitable to cold-blooded murder.

Two cases compete with his wife's pregnancy, already complicated by pre-eclampsia and an extended visit from her boorish American brother and sister, for Kari's attention. The more florid case is the murder of Iisa Filippov, who was stripped, bound, beaten with a riding crop and burned with cigarettes before she died. Everything about the ritual killing points to her ice-water husband Ivan, who owns an asbestos-removal business, and his secretary Linda Pohjoda, who bears an uncanny resemblance to both the murder victim and the 1950s bondage pinup girl Bettie Page. But Kari is repeatedly stonewalled by Ivan and hamstrung by his boss, national police chief Jyri Ivalo. More intriguingly, Jyri seems just as interested in the more obscure case, an allegation that Finnish war hero Arvid Lahtinen, at 90 the sole survivor of Stalag 309, was actually complicit with the Nazis in running the camp and executing its inmates. Recognizing that Arvid may have been in cahoots with government higher-ups and Kari's own grandfather, Kari keeps returning to him for one more round of questions till his two leading cases (there are others as well) collide with a satisfying snap.

Nazi collaboration, government cover-ups, kinky sex, a baby daughter waiting impatiently to be born and a vigilante-minded hero who talks back to his boss more irreverently than Dirty Harry. What more could you want?

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011

In Thompson's second crime novel featuring Inspector Kari Vaara (Snow Angels), the brooding Finnish homicide detective has moved from small-town Lapland to urban Helsinki for a fresh start. Instead, Kari juggles a multitude of woes. He's racked by migraines and petrified that the pregnancy of his American wife, Kate, will end badly. Meanwhile, Kate's alcoholic brother and self-righteous sister are visiting. The interior minister wants him to investigate a 90-year-old security police veteran accused of committing war crimes--atrocities that also implicate Kari's beloved grandfather. To top it off, a case involving the grisly S&M-tinged murder of a Russian businessman's wife has stalled. The husband is guilty, but Kari can't prove it--until an unlikely ally intervenes. VERDICT Thompson, an American expat living in Finland, tends to let his affinity for multiple story lines get the better of him. Fortunately, his intriguing insights into Nordic cultures help compensate, as does the book's hard-boiled sensibility. Give this to readers of gritty procedurals both international and domestic [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/10.]--Annabelle Mortensen, Skokie P.L., IL

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2011
One year after the traumatic events of Snow Angels (2010), Inspector Kari Vaara is now living in Helsinki with his heavily pregnant American wife. While Kate has adjusted well to their new life, Vaara still struggles; returning to Helsinki is not easy for him, and now Kates pregnancy is causing him such extreme stress that he has barely slept for months and has headaches that last for weeks. Disliked by the rest of the homicide department, Vaara is partnered with Milo, the other department pariah, an enthusiastic, lonely, and eccentric detective with unusual hobbies. When they are assigned to investigate the death of a wealthy married woman, found in another mans bed, the seemingly cut-and-dried case soon becomes a tangled web that Vaara is determined to unweave, no matter the preferences of his superiors. Meanwhile, he is also given an off-the-record job of investigating a national hero who is currently wanted for war crimes from WWII and who may very well have known Vaaras beloved grandfather. Together these plots form an impossible-to-put-down read. Thompsons second book, even better than the first, will surely be one of the best Nordic mysteries published in 2011. Essential reading for all fans of Arnaldur Indridason, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, and Jo Nesb.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)