A decades-old crime is revealed in the first book of a new cozy mystery series.
Author: Eppu Nuotio
Finnish original: Leinikkimekko | Raakel Oksa ratkaisee #1
Publisher: Gummerus, 2022
Genre: cozy crime
Number of pages: 233 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English synopsis, English sample
Rights sold: Denmark, Storytel (optioned); Island, Storytel (optioned); Latvia, Zvaigzne; Sweden, Storytel (optioned)
Carpenter Raakel Oksa is commissioned to remodel an old apartment in Helsinki’s Töölö district. Raakel and her trusted fellow renovator Danne demolish a wall only to discover a metal box containing a severed braid, a dress in a buttercup print, and a piece of rosin.
The curious find will not leave Raakel in peace, and she starts digging into the building’s history. Before long, a decades-old disappearance that shocked the country comes to light: a young woman who came to the city to study violin for the summer vanished without a trace. Raakel chats up old residents in the neighborhood and learns freedom and first love were not the only things the girl from the countryside found in the city: heat-struck Helsinki was also teeming with dangers.
The Buttercup Dress is the first book in the Raakel Oksa Sets It Right series, in which entrepreneur carpenter Raakel renovates homes around Helsinki. The books, which offer mysteries, light-hearted social complications, and sly plot twists, dovetail cleverly with Nuotio’s previous series of bestsellers, Ellen Lähde Investigates.
Also available:
Love Like a Strange Land (2021)
Those Deadly Bells (Ellen Lähde Investigates #1) (2017)
Tongues Like Knives (Ellen Lähde Investigates #2) (2019)
The Showy Strangler (Ellen Lähde Investigates #3) (2020)
About the author:
Eppu Nuotio