Kirjahaku

In a wintry graveyard, a young man looks death in the eye and does not live to tell the secrets he holds. In Russia, the opening of a dusty archive reveals clues about a deadly game which has not yet reached its conclusion. In an isolated farmhouse, an old man is kept prisoner while his captors try to extract vital information from his rambling mind. Into this sticky web of deceit and intrigue stumbles Martin teschmaker, a newly redundant insurance investigator who has just been deserted by his wife. Seeking relief from his mid-life crisis, teschmaker contacts an old girlfriend, Jane Morris. With that one phone call he is plunged into an underworld where nothing and no one can be taken at face value. As he attempts to remove the masks, teschmaker realises the truth is more complex and more dangerous than he could ever have imagined. And somehow he has to bring this deadly game to its conclusion, and survive.

The discovery of a woman, unconscious in a boat on London's River Thames, launches Detective Inspector Nicole Parry into an investigation that everyone else, including the CIA and MI6, want buried. When the woman is interviewed in hospital she responds in a language nobody can understand or even recognise. Then she vanishes. Against the orders of her superiors and in the face of deadly opposition from the security forces of Britain and the USA, and hunted by the Russian mafia, Nicole, suspended from duty, begins an investigation that takes her from London to Helsinki, into the wilds of Finland and eventually plunges her into the murky world of contemporary Russian politics. Teaming up with taciturn Finnish Security Intelligence Officer, Pentti Toivonen, Nicole risks death and disgrace in order to stop a plot that is intended to unseat governments and unleash extremist forces.Along the way the only clues appear to come from the ancient Finnish epic poem The Kalevala, and hinge on the theft of a mythical object - the Sampo.Weaving ancient folklore with contemporary events, Dead North is a literary thriller in the Scandinavian Noir tradition.