James Thompson Lucifer's Tears

[Giovanni Gelati]

 

Wow, it is Thursday already and we are moving like a bullet train headed for a big day on Saturday. Our second Improvised Digital short Story will be happening then and I am totally amped at the prospect of working with a fine group of authors on this next project. We will start at 8am on Saturday and hopefully be done everything by 3pm.I am giving each author a time limit of 1.5 hours to put together their 1,000 to 1500 words of the story. Basically within a nice 8 hour time span we will create 2 new stories, provide cover art for it, edit it, publish it, and then create an audio file of it. Not bad. Tune in and listen; it should be a rip. Now let’s get to today’s novel. Here is what is between the covers:

“Inspector Kari Vaara returns, more haunted than ever, in the follow- up to Snow Angels, "a must for fans of the international crime novel." (Booklist)

The Sufia Elmi case left Kari Vaara with a scarred face, chronic insomnia, a constant migraine, and a full body count's worth of ghosts. Now it's a year later, in Helsinki, and Kari is working the graveyard shift in the homicide unit, terrified that his heavily pregnant wife will miscarry again after she lost the twins just after Christmas.

Kari is pushed into investigating a ninety-year-old national hero for war crimes committed during World War II. The Interior Minister demands a conclusion of innocence, preserving Finland's heroic perception about itself and its role in the war, but Germany wants extradition.

In a seeming coincidence, Kari is drawn into the murder-by-torture case of Lisa Filippov, the philandering wife of a Russian businessman. Her lover is clearly being framed for the crime-and Ivan Filippov's arrogance and nonchalance point the finger at him. But he's being protected from above, leading Kari to the corrupt corridors of power. Soon the past and present collide in ways no one could have anticipated.”

I have not read any of this author’s previous work, so I am a first time reader here. His style I enjoyed, his main character, Kari Vaara, was good. He seems to be your basic flawed, fractured, disgruntled, Dirty Harry type detective but living in a place where people’s names are spelled and said a bit differently. Kari has way too much baggage from a few to many shootings and police run- ins to be anything close to normal. His wife is just as OCD as he is coming from a similarly fractured family from the USA. How wonderful, your basic average couple, needing one of the biggest UHauls ever just to carry their emotional baggage, physical & emotional scars with them from place to place. Parking must be a bitch for them in Helsinki. Is this an uplifting tale? What do you think? I did enjoy the whodunit aspect to it, gaining some insight into another part of the world was cool, reading a new author was nice also. He definitely is a different flav than the rest of what I have been reading. Is it all depressing? No, but I do tend to enjoy lighter fare. I enjoy suspense, thrillers, mysteries, great character driven fiction, but the bummer for me was Kari; he could be much better and more flawed with much less. Does that make sense? For me it does, maybe I am off base; to me, less is more. I would not pass up the read and I am hitting it with four stars: there is some good action and many twists. Give me your opinion on this novel, I would enjoy the feedback. Thanks, I looking forward to hearing from on this and seeing you on Saturday.

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