As the brick hurls though the large glass living room window, hundreds of glass fragments fill the room leaving blood filled cuts in the severely disabled man sitting in the comfy chair. How could he clean up all this glass when he can barely hobble around the fourth floor apartment? Who could have done this?

The brick has been wrapped with a warning and Inspector Kari Vaara realizes he has too many enemies to begin to figure out who is targeting him now. Overmedicating on painkillers and alcohol, Kari is recovering from the bullets that had viciously smashed into his jaw and his previously damaged knee when he and his team had concluded their last police investigation. All had suffered varying psychological and physical injuries. Kate, his beloved American born wife, suffers greatly from post-traumatic stress disorder from having to kill a man. In her distress, she left Kari and has taken their six month old baby daughter Anu with her. The only good thing in Vaara's mind are the ten million Euros that have gone missing. But Kate unexpectedly returns only to leave little Anu behind. What is the unstable Kate planning now? How can he stop his enemies from hurting him, his baby and his small family of friends?

Then in the most unusual of circumstances, an Estonian woman asks that he find her missing nineteen year old daughter who is a trusting girl with Down's syndrome who left for the big city of Helsinki for a promised secretarial job. Vaarga immediately suspects that the daughter has been victimized by a human trafficking gang. Despite his weakened condition and the ongoing attacks of his enemies, he is determined to find little Loviise. In his mind, filled as it is with pain killers, he believes that finding the girl will be his talisman to get Kate to come back to him? Given his condition and the likelihood of finding a young girl, can he possibly find her still alive?

HELSINKI BLOOD is the fourth novel in James Thompson's Inspector Vaara series and it is a very raw and visceral account of a cop who wants his life back. Thompson quickly places the reader right into the action as the story moves from the disabled cop in his big chair to ruthless and shocking murders and much more in this deftly written complex and multilayered story of a small dysfunctional team up the overwhelming power of corrupt government officials both in Finland and from Russia.

Thompson fans are sure to appreciate this latest installment as the seemingly cold-blooded and heartless Inspector Vaara struggles to redeem himself and find his long buried humanity. While HELSINKI BLOOD reads quite well as a stand-alone book as Thompson highlights key events covered in the earlier books, I would definitely encourage readers to start with the first book, Snow Angels, and then to read the others in sequence for fullest impact. The storyline in HELSINKI BLOOD starts within a few weeks from the dramatic conclusion in Helsinki White.

While Thompson's characters are all unusual, they do come across as very real as their reactions and motivations are so true to their characters. Thompson's talents at particular strong in depicting Vaara as you find yourself rooting that things will turn out well for him and his family, despite his bloody-mindedness and cold-blooded ways of deal with his enemies and even his friends. If you like non-stop action and highly unusual police related stories, you will definitely want to delve into the shocking high voltage and Nordic depths of HELSINKI BLOOD! It is tough to read and ever harder to put down!