Ice Moon (2003)

Set in Finland this is a psychological thriller about the many different ways a person handles or hides their grief. Liked the lead detective Kimmo Joenta, who doesn't know how to handle the fact that his wife as died and finds himself back at work and involved in a murder case. Intrigued enough to read his next US release called "Silence" which came out last week. ( )

First in a series of 3, with the 4th published in German. Have read #3. The protagonist, Joentaa, is a 29 year old Turku police detective, who has just lost his wife. In the midst of his mourning, there is a murder, followed by a similar one, and then .......more. The mourning isis genuine, a man who has lost his wife too soon, and cannot focus on the present without soon being consumed with memories of Saana. Very touching. The detective has a bit of a gift, a sixth sense of sorts - there are things he feels, things he knows - but cannot explain. other characters are well done, the translation is adequate. Will soon read book #2, Silence. Interesting series about Finland, written by a German. LAST BOOK OF 2011, # 100. ( )

Have you ever wished you could turn back the clock, so that recent events have never happened?
Then you, I, the detective in this novel, and the murderer, all have something in common.

Detective Kimmo Joentaa of the Turku CID in Finland was holding his wife Sanna's hand when she went to sleep for the last time. For days and nights he had been at her bedside, and he noted the time of her death. It left him with a deep stabbng pain that he thought would never leave him.

The day after Sanna's death he reports back for work, not knowing what else to do. It isn't as if there is no work to occupy him. In the week before, an attempt had been made on the life of a local politician. After Joentaa returns to work a man who has been away from home for a week reports the death of his wife. It seems she was very probably suffocated with a pillow during the previous night. It is the first of three deaths that at first do not seem to be connected but Joentaa's gut feeling is that they are.

From the start the reader knows who the murderer is and for much of ICE MOON we watch the murderer's path and that of the investigation converge. Kimmo Joentaa probably should not have gone back to work so early. He is having trouble letting go, of detaching himself from Sanna. He sees her everywhere, and interprets events and clues in the light of his relationship with her.

So ICE MOON is a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit. It is an investigation into not only why the murderer is committing the murders, but why the investigators behave as they do. Just as Kimmo Joentaa is in many ways unfit to be part of this investigation, so too his boss Ketola has personal pressures that are making him fragile, and at time unfit to lead the investigation. ( )

Police detectives who inhabit Scandinavian police procedurals tend to be an introspective and often morose group. Detective Kimmo Joentaa of the Criminal Investigation Department based in Torku, Finland amplifies this image tenfold as he struggles to survive an emotional tsunami created by the death of his wife, Sanna, in the opening chapter of Jan Costin Wagner’s Ice Moon. So the murder of Mrs. Ojaranta while her husband claims to have been away on business provides some escape from the void that has suddenly formed in Kimmo’s life. There are only a few puzzling clues at the crime scene: a wine glass and half a bottle of white wine in the kitchen, another wine glass and half a bottle of red wine in the living room, and a missing painting of no monetary value. There are no signs of a break-in, no fingerprints, no apparent motive for Mrs. Ojaranta’s murder. For reasons he doesn’t quite understand, the grief-stricken Kimmo experiences an emotional connection to this woman’s death; he is determined to solve this crime. But, as Kimmo plods through the investigation, he must determine if this crime is related to or separate from the other murders that soon follow. He desperately wants to understand the motives behind these seemingly unrelated and random deaths. And why was Ketola, the chief of the CID and Kimmo’s boss, exhibiting such violent mood swings? And, Kimmo wonders, what is the point of living without Sanna?

With it’s Finland setting and well-drawn characters, Ice Moon is a worthy addition to the Scandinavian titles in this genre. I highly recommend it to fans of Scandinavian mysteries. ( )

A very good book full of the atmoshere of Finland. A melancholy detective mourning the death of his wife is the fine central character who investigates the deaths of three other people. Well developed characters and a good plot make this a very good read. ( )