Before I Go

Maria Kallio, Book 7

De: Leena Lehtolainen, Owen F. Witesman - translator

Narrado por: Amy Rubinate

A fierce detective risks everything to unravel a tangle of secrets and corruption protecting a killer in this spellbinding seventh mystery in the tension-filled Maria Kallio series.

When Petri Ilveskivi is murdered in the street on his way to a city-planning meeting, Maria Kallio, commander of Espoo's Violent Crime Unit, and her team are first on the scene. Almost immediately, her focus is on the band of skinheads who brutally attacked the Finnish commissioner and his husband three years earlier. Did they finally finish the hate crime they started? But the trail soon reveals a web of lies - secrets Petri was keeping from even those closest to him - and a long list of suspects.

As she juggles her obligations as a wife, mother, and detective, Maria suggests to her superiors that what first appears to be a random assault may actually be something more sinister. When she's met with silence and higher-ups take her off the case, she disobeys orders and investigates on her own, putting both her family and herself at risk. In this captivating tale in the Maria Kallio series, someone is protecting a killer. Can Maria track them down before the next victim falls?

©2000 Leena Lehtolainen. Translation © 2017 Owen F. Witesman. (P)2017 2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Rock solid suspense thriller!

Before I go, the 7th novel in the Maria Kallio series by Finnish author Leena Lehtolainen, was released today in English. I have written reviews of the prior 6 novels in the Detective Mario Kallio series. This police procedural/suspense thriller does not disappoint. The publisher's summary does a good job setting up the novel, so I will not add to it other than to write that this novel contains more about Kallio's personal life than the seven others combined. Narration by Amy Rubinate is outstanding.

Waste of Time and Money

This book was just plain bad. First off, there were so many characters, I couldn't keep track. To be fair, I am not Finnish, nor do I speak Finnish; so the many, many, many characters may have been more difficult to track because of the Finnish names (of which I am not familiar). So many of the characters' names sounded too much alike and the author sometimes used the character's first and last names, sometimes just the first and yet at other times just the last name, which only caused more confusion!
The thin plot line was made laughable by the author's far too numerous references to the main character's hunger, appetite and her subsequent low blood sugar!!! She was always in search of her next meal and lunch partner-despite her claiming to be so busy she always found time for food. The author's foray into the main character's dietary habits were completely ludicrous and had nothing to do with anything!
Another unnecessary element was the sidetrack into the main character's love of punk music and her sideline treks to sing kararoke!...double lame! Added nothing to the story...no relevance.
I solved the mystery (what little there was), very early on and the author just belabored the obvious over and over again while her main character ate!