Frightful Friday: Lucifer’s Tears by James Thompson

Frightful Friday is a weekly meme in which I feature a particularly scary or chilling book that I’ve read that week. Feel free to grab the button & join in! Be sure to include a link to your post in the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post!

This week’s book is Lucifer’s Tears, the second book in James Thompson’s Inspector Vaara series.

Warning: Graphic details of sex acts.

It has been a year since the tragic events that took place in Snow Angels.  Inspector Kari Vaara is recovering from a gunshot wound to his face.  He and his wife, Kate (now 8 1/2 months pregnant) have moved to Helsinki to get away from the cold, haunting setting of their previous home in the Arctic Circle. Kari continues to feel guilt for taking so long to solve this earlier crime:

 “The bullet left an ugly scar, which could have been corrected with minor plastic surgery, but I refused.  I wear it as a symbol of my guilt for failing to solve the case sooner.  I could have spared all those people so much death and misery.”

Having miscarried the twins in a previous pregnancy, both Kari & Kate are anxious that this new baby, a girl, be born without complications.  To assist in her pregnancy, Kate has invited her sister, Mary, and her brother, John, to stay with her for the rest of her pregnancy.  Kate hasn’t seen her siblings in years; they grew up in a pretty tumultous & abusive home in which Kate was essentially the woman of the house. Mary & John, like Kate, are from the United States and their cultural differences instantly cause them to butt heads with Kari, a native of Finland.

Kari is working on two cases in his new role as a Homicide Inspector: a murder & an investigation into a war crime. 

The murder victim is Iisa Filippov, wife of Ivan Filippov.  Ivan is a prominent business owner with ties to top of the law enforcement food chain.  Iisa was found brutally murdered, her body lashed & whipped by a riding crop and covered in cigarette burns.  Her lover, Rein Saar, has been implicated in the murder.  He was attacked upon entering his apartment, knocked out & woke up next to Iisa’s dead body.  Yet Kari & his partner, Milo, can’t seem to get over the idea that Filippov himself had something to do with the murder.  He is further implicated when they learn he has been having an affair with Linda, Iisa’s best friend and near-double. A world of ilicit affairs & kinky sex acts is unveiled, implicating prominent members of society along the way.  To make matters worse, Milo is a loose canon, unable or unwilling to follow procedure and his actions threaten the case.

Kari’s other case involves Arvid, an elderly man accused of war crimes in Finland during World War II.  Kari learns that Arvid and his grandfather, whom he loved and respected, served together in the same unit.  This investigation reveals a lot of history about the war, and his grandfather…a history he wasn’t quite prepared to discover.

To compound all of Kari’s already existing stress, Kate’s siblings aren’t exactly what she remembered them to be.  John’s a raging alcoholic and Mary is a very conservative and religious woman, old beyond her years. 

While trying to juggle all of these issues: his old case, Kate’s miscarriage, the cases he’s working on,  Kari continues to suffer from debilitating, continuous migraines. He’s unable to sleep, yet hides the true extent of his pain from Kate for fear it will affect her pregnancy.

I reviewed Snow Angels, the first book in this series, over a year ago.  I couldn’t imagine enjoying a book more than that one.  I’ve raved about it non-stop since then!  Thompson’s vivid, detailed writing truly pulls the reader into the setting.   Snow Angels took place in the frigid Arctic Circle and while reading it, I quite literally felt the cold.

With Lucifer’s Tears Lucifer’s Tears I experienced a similar reaction, but this time to Kari’s constant migraines.  Thompson’s description of the pain was so detailed and tangible that I experienced a dull, “sympathy headache” through my duration of the book. 

One would think that would deter me from reading but it did not.  Lucifer’s Tears, so multi-dimensional, gained my attention from the beginning.  While I didn’t want the book to end, I also couldn’t bear to put it down.

The storyline is riveting, fast-paced, and intense.  Thompson describes Finland and its residents to a “t”.  Like in Snow Angels, the setting is a character itself:

“My home, Finland.  the ninth and innermost circle of hell.  A frozen lake of blood and guilt formed from Lucifer’s tears, turned to ice by the flapping of his leathery wings.”

“The snow, already almost waist-high, pours down in a torrent. Lucifer does not relent.  Dante states that the devil resides in the ninth circle of hell, trapped in the ice like the rest of us, and I feel that he’s here, watching over us with approval.”

Fans of Nordic crime fiction won’t want to pass this one up!  While Thompson does an outstanding job of providing back story, I would recommend reading this series in order.

*Note* I learned, after reading this book, that Thompson himself suffers from debilitating migraines. Check out this powerful guest post over at Musings of an All-Purpose Monkey to learn more!

Be sure to include a link to your chilling or frightful post below!