You know that we’re crazy about cold climate crime here on Crime Fiction Lover, and in 2013 I was lucky enough not only to visit Finland but to do so just as I was reviewing Antti Tuomainen’s first crime novel The Healer. It was an icy January and I was in my element. Good fortune struck again in 2014 when I went to Iceland Noir and actually managed to meet the author. And now we’re three times lucky because his latest book has landed on the Welcome mat here at CFL HQ. Dark As My Heart is the title, and I can’t wait to get started.

As endings go, The Healer was pretty dark, and going by the title alone it looks as though Dark As My Heart will continue in the same vein. It’s a story of vengeance as a man called Aleksi decides to find out who killed his mother 20 years ago. He thinks he knows who’s responsible – the wealthy Henrik Saarinen.

Aleksi becomes obsessed with his quest to find out whether or not Saarinen did it and in doing so is drawn close to the man’s daughter and the Saarinen family’s dark secrets. Needless to say, this puts him in danger and the press release likens it to James Ellroy’s My Dark Places, a Greek tragedy and a Hitchcockian mystery. We’ll have to find out when we review it. Hopefully we’ll get to see the cop Jaatinen from The Healer again… who knows.

The author is an acclaimed poet and his first crime novel won the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel from the Finnish Crime Society. It’s on sale 1 October at £12.99 as a paperback and £5.49 for Kindle. Pre-order yours here.