Search results for ""Author Leena Lehtolainen""

Detective Maria Kallio investigates a doping scandal turned murder in award-winning author Leena Lehtolainen’s pulse-pounding thriller. After surviving a terrifying assault during her last investigation, Maria Kallio traded in her badge for a comfortable desk job. But when the head of social affairs for the Finnish Athletics Federation is murdered—the victim of an apparent poisoning—Maria is drawn back into a race against more than murder. A series of crimes has unfolded, and to Maria’s trained eyes, they look like the makings of a conspiracy. As Maria follows the track to a doping scandal, a money-laundering scheme, domestic abuse, and explosive death threats leveled against a sports reporter, she collects the pieces of a baffling puzzle. Now, to run down the killer and save the next victim, all she has to do is make them fit. So far only one thing is for certain: Maria Kallio is rediscovering the thrill of the chase.

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Professional bodyguard Hilja Ilveskero will do anything to protect her client. But when that client is the daughter of a nefarious real estate tycoon who is the mortal enemy of Hilja’s true love, things get complicated. She knows there must be an endgame to this job, but the pay is just too good to refuse. As Hilja learns more, mysteries begin to unravel, and dark crimes targeting the most vulnerable of victims come to light. Hilja must do everything in her power to protect enemies, loved ones, and innocents alike. From bestselling Scandinavian crime writer Leena Lehtolainen comes the final gripping installment of The Bodyguard series.

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Noora Nieminen was destined to become a world champion. But when the sixteen-year-old skating sensation is found slain with her own skates, her promising career is unexpectedly cut short. Detective Maria Kallio is seven months pregnant, but that isn’t going to stop her from putting everything she has into solving the murder. With a promotion on the line and her arrogant adversary, Pertti Ström, vying for the new job, Maria is determined to make an arrest. Could it be the deviant criminal who’s lately been terrorizing the city? Is it the former lover of Noora’s mother, who has been stalking the family since she rejected him? Or might the killer be someone even closer than that? With so much riding on Noora’s success—and so many people with motives to murder—the detective must sift through the long list of suspects before the case turns ice cold. Death Spiral, the fifth book in Lehtolainen’s international bestselling Nordic crime series, is a chilling tale of hot tempers, high stakes, and the untimely death of a rising star.

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A group of hate crimes, a conspiracy, or a coincidence? Investigator Maria Kallio searches for answers close to home in award-winning author Leena Lehtolainen’s riveting thriller. After completing a dangerous mission training police officers in war-torn Afghanistan, Detective Maria Kallio returns to Finland as the head of a new special crimes unit. But what awaits her in her home country is her most challenging and unsettling case yet. Three immigrant Muslim girls, all members of the same social club, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. When the body of a fourth girl is found in the snow, strangled with her own headscarf, the investigation takes on a grim new urgency. Is there a xenophobic serial killer on the loose? A random white nationalist? Or does something more insidious bind the girls? In a Finnish city struggling to assimilate a new population of Muslim immigrants, the answers are hard to come by… One thing is certain: it will take a detective familiar with the darkest depths of humanity to sift through the wreckage of clashing cultures in search of the truth. That detective is Maria Kallio.

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Award-winning author Leena Lehtolainen’s heart-stopping series continues as investigator Maria Kallio’s hunt for a killer gets dark, dangerous, and dirty… A grievously mutilated young woman arrives at the hospital in Espoo, Finland—only to vanish without a trace. Though the victim refused to identify herself, Violent Crimes Unit Commander Maria Kallio suspects she’s connected to the city’s sex-worker underworld. The next day her suspicions grow when celebrity call girl Lulu Nightingale is murdered during a live television broadcast. The victim’s clients included some of the top names in Finnish society, but the list of suspects is even longer: her infatuated bodyguard, a suicidal TV producer, and a talk-show host with political aspirations. But how is Lulu’s murder connected to the tortured woman’s disappearance? As the body count keeps rising, Maria plunges into the dark demimonde of the sex trade. And this time, searching for answers may shatter all that she has.

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