This is a review of the advanced copy “Helsinki Blood” by James Thompson for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

The book is about Inspector Kari Vaara’s life as he and his mates scramble to mop up the consequences of their last round of well-intended thefts and executions.

Kari is the top cop in Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation and has been “shot to pieces.” His wife Kate has gone off with their daughter Anu due to PTSD.

Someone who knows that Kari and his colleagues stole €10 million from drug dealers is threatening him with increasingly lethal parcels tossed through his front window. Kari calls DS Milo Nieminen and police translator Sulo “Sweetness” Polvinen for help.

Together with Milo’s girlfriend Jenna and Sweetness’ cousin Mirjami, they hunker down inside Kari’s besieged apartment and wait for an excuse to go on the offensive against their old enemies. A pretext arrives when Estonian widow Salme Tamm reports her daughter Loviise missing.
Kari and company lean on the Harper brothers, casino keepers and pimps, to help them go after the usual suspects and incidentally recover Loviise.

The book feels like as a violent soap opera that owes less to other tales of Scandinavian cops than to samurai sagas and spaghetti Westerns.
This reviewer is luke warm on book and rates the book with 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. ( )

A Nordic crime novel of it's very own type, despite comparisons the Jo Nesbo series. Good characters and a decent plot that moves fast and violently.

As If [Vachss] had been writing in this genre ( )

Unlike the other Inspector Varra Novels, this one seemed hurried and confused. Very disappointing. ( )

If you are a fan of Thompson's Inspector Kari Vaara, you will not be disappointed with this latest in the series. Policeman Vaara has been badly wounded in the last installment and his wife Kate has had a nervous breakdown in response to her part in this confrontation that severely injured her husband. Vaara and his friends can be vicious and violent in their attempts to mete out justice and seek out criminals to punish. Fast paced intense Finnish noir. ( )

I am a fan of the Inspector Vaara series and this Chicago winter has been the perfect to drop into it. However, Helsinki Blood is only loosely a mystery. The majority of the story is a dysfunctional family drama revolving around the drinking and drugging of Vaara, his wife and immediate circle of friends. I enjoy Vaara and his circle of friends, but there is not much happening here. There is no detecting. Problems are solved through sheer thuggery. I understand that Vaara is a cop gone "bad," but even if he is given to evil, there has to be something that elevates him from other thugs even if its is sinister intellect. That is not present here. We are simply supposed to believe that Vaara wins because he is more of a thug than the other thugs. In past novels, I enjoyed the fringe characters even if the plot did not hold up. Even that element is missing here, we are supposed to believe that a sixteen (16) year old ward of the state is running a well organized crime syndicate, while maintaining good grades and pristine professionalism. The only thing that keeps my rating from falling further is my affection for the setting and rest of the series. I will probably still read the next. ( )