My First Murder

Maria Kallio, Book 1

By: Leena Lehtolainen, Owen F. Witesman - translator

Narrated by: Amy Rubinate

After a student choir’s practice session at a Helsinki villa turns deadly, Detective Maria Kallio finds herself in the middle of the action - and her first murder case. Someone in the group wanted playboy Tommi Peltonen dead, but that’s one song these suspects refuse to sing. Behind the choir’s jovial facade lies bitter passion, and the victim’s seemingly perfect life hid a host of sins that made him a target of almost everyone in the villa.

As a young female - and a redhead to boot - Maria knows that solving this case will help her overcome her perceived shortcoming in the eyes of her colleagues. But as the case takes startling twists and turns, and friends and foes become interchangeable, will she be able to piece together the clues before the killer strikes again?

©2012 Leena Lehtolainen (P)2012 Brilliance Audio

Narrator made this impossible to complete

I was excited to find a Finnish crime series with so many titles to keep me listening through the winter waiting for another season of Bordertown -I love stories that connect me to my family in Finland. It’s possible that some of the issues are translation problems, but this narrator is impossible to listen to. I agree with other reviews that she sounded like the text-to-audio narration but a few chapters in she seemed to loosen up a bit. But the pronunciation of names is ridiculous. I’ve listened to other Nordic novels narrated with excellent pronunciation of people and place names. This was just lazy reading on top of a storyline that was so wildly implausible that I couldn’t get past chapter 4. Sad to let this whole series go, but there’s so much better available in this genre.

Good story; odd narration <br /><br /><br />

I enjoyed the story, but I plan to avoid any other books by this narrator

Good book... LOUSY narrator!

The narrator was so bad that I can’t listen to her anymore and I deleted all the sequels to this book I already bought... VERY disappointing.

A rookie investigator may be in over her head.

Everything about Maria Kallio is tentative: She has yet to finish a degree she's not sure she wants. She has a place to live only because her relatives let her stay there while the apartment market is down. She has a job with the police, but it's terrible - and temporary. She doesn't much care for it, except as a livelihood, and she seems not particularly good at it: She is socially awkward, and gets too emotionally involved. But it's just a job, and not a great one, at that, so all she has to do is keep her head down, not screw up, and she'll be out of there soon enough. Then she gets reluctantly put in charge of a major case. Can she actually see this one thing through to the end?

This is a very brief first novel in a series about Maria Kallio. I liked the way the main character's "awkward age" is portrayed against a cast of suspects at a similar stage in life. The simple drudgery and distractions of police work are also described well, and played off against the crime-solving and "character" aspects of the story in an effective manner.

The narrator has a lovely voice and her delivery is very well-suited to the character.

Decent story, disappointing performance

I enjoyed the novel as a first venture. Interesting story line and good character development. The reader is very disappointing, seems to be trying for soap opera-like excitement with a breathy voice that has no range. I won't choose audible if sge is the reader of the next book.