Just finished reading Kai Ekholm’s Niiden Kirjojen Mukaan Teidät on Tuomittava (Atena Kustannus 2013) and I hope this one gets translated. It involves crimes and mystery, but I wouldn’t categorize it as a thriller as the word is commonly used. More of a classic crime novel but with a definite literary bent. 

A young girl is found dead atop a labyrinth made up of books in the rotunda of the National Library of Finland in Helsinki. Soon it is determined that she has been dead for fifty years and that the books she was arrayed upon provide the clues to her identity. But how to go about finding clues from over a thousand seemingly random books? Kalju and his Chilean partner Kihara own a detective agency and they are recruited to help the police solve the mystery. More bodies are found before the novel is over, and atrocities from the past come to light.

Black humor riddles the pages and the characters and descriptions are delightful – I hope we get to meet them again! 

Author Kai Ekholm is Director of the National Library of Finland and he adds an interesting anecdote at the end of the book about a certain (fictive) Mr. Corpwieth, Gentleman Detective who solved cases in this very library in 1914. Two Corpwieth stories were written by Henning Söderhjelm who worked at the library at the time, but they made Head Librarian Schaumann nervous and he wanted to forbid them!This in turn, makes me want to read them and as luck would have it, they have been translated into Finnish in 2003…