Behind God's Back
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Praise for Harri Nykänen's Nights of Awe:
"The clever combination of classic Jewish themes with the traditions of Nordic crime makes for a refreshing tale with wide appeal. And the subtle humor makes it even better."—Booklist
"Professional responsibility and ethnic affiliation clash in Nykänen's intriguing first novel. The resolution will satisfy noir fans."—Publishers Weekly
"Ariel Kafka wins the award for most intriguing name for a fictional detective, and it suits this impressively labyrinthine mystery series."—Time Out
The second in the Ariel Kafka series.
There are two Jewish cops in all of Helsinki. One of them, Ariel Kafka, a lieutenant in the Violent Crime Unit, identifies himself as a policeman first, then a Finn, and lastly a Jew. Kafka is a religiously non-observant forty-something bachelor who is such a stubborn, dedicated policeman that he's willing to risk his career to get an answer. Murky circumstances surround his investigation of a Jewish businessman's murder. Neo-Nazi violence, intergenerational intrigue, shady loans—predictable lines of investigation lead to unpredictable culprits. But a second killing strikes closer to home, and the Finnish Security Police come knocking. The tentacles of Israeli politics and Mossad reach surprisingly far, once again wrapping Kafka in their sticky embrace.
Harri Nykänen, born in Helsinki in 1953, was a well-known crime journalist and is now dedicated to writing fiction. The first in the Ariel Kafka series was Nights of Awe. Nykänen's work exposes the local underworld through the eyes of the criminal, the terrorist, and now from the point of view of an eccentric Helsinki police inspector.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Nyk nen's intricately plotted second Ariel Kafka novel to be published in English (after 2012's Nights of Awe), the Helsinki Violent Crimes Unit cop looks into the shooting murder of Jewish businessman Samuel Jacobson, whose daughter he once dated. Jacobson's widow reveals that her husband recently engineered a major loan through Kafka & Oxbaum, a law firm owned by Kafka's brother, Eli, and a second cousin of theirs, Max Oxbaum. Kafka already knows that Eli and Max brokered their clients' loans from an Estonian company, Baltic Invest, which is owned by Israeli businessman Benjamin Hararin, a front man for Amos Jakov, who's believed to have links to the Russian mafia. Family ties and the tight-knit dealings within Finland's small Jewish community complicate the investigation, but the sympathetic Kafka manages to perform a delicate balancing act on his way to an unexpected resolution of the crime.
