The Burning Stones

A top saleswoman at a Finnish sauna company must outwit the police and a murderer when her boss is found dead … in a sauna. A darkly funny, tense new thriller from ‘The funniest writer in Europe’ (The Times)

`The best comic crime novel you’ll read this year´ Abir Mukherjee

`Suspense is uppermost in this adroit mix of psychological thriller, whodunnit and middle-aged rom-com. Comedy is still pervasive … the novel’s glorious gallery of weirdos´ Sunday Times Book of the Month

`Finnish author Tuomainen has a talent for creating offbeat characters … [a] tense, pacy novel, laced with the author’s trademark laconic humour´ Guardian Book of the Month

`It may seem hard to find good comic crime-writers, but clearly we haven’t been looking in Finland … simultaneously thrilling and evocative of the mundanity of life, and also very funny indeed´ Telegraph

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Love, murder, middle age, and a sauna to die for…

A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered … in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death?

The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen – top salesperson and the victim’s successor at Steam Devil.

And as if hitting middle-age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren’t enough, Anni realizes that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all – before it’s too late…

From the international bestselling author of Little Siberia and The Rabbit Factor, comes a darkly funny, delightfully tense new thriller that showcases humanity at its most bare – in middle age, suspected of murder and, of course, in a sauna…