Harri Nykänen's Behind God's Back

Harri Nykänen is one of the most prominent Finnish crime writers, with two series that have begun to be translated into English: one features Raid, a hit man (and the basis for a widely-shown TV series), and the other features Ariel Kafka, a Jewish cop in Helsinki, in a police force (and a city) with a small Jewish population. Both of the Kafka books published so far also feature elements of cultural and police interaction between Finland and Israel.

Kafka doesn't actively participate in the Jewish community, but is drawn back into it when a prominent Jewish businessman is assassinated in the doorway of his house, to which he has retreated in fear of some unknown party that has threatened him. The Jewish connection is not the only focus of the investigation (and not the only reason Kafka is assigned to the case), but ensuing discoveries and events continue to reveal connections to the community and to Israeli politics (as well as to Ariel's own brother, whose business is implicated in a shady load obtained by the dead businessman).

Nykänen's Kafka books lack some of the dry wit that characterizes his Raid books (which are in part a migration of tropes of Westerns to contemporary Finland), though some of it remains (in, for instance, one of Ariel's coworkers who is obsessed with Native American culture, a sort of crossover with the Raid series). But Ariel's narration is a lively rendition of the police procedural mode, and the occasional chase scenes (one involving a killer escaping via kayak), shooting incidents, angry witnesses, and violent encounters are all lively events taking the reader momentarily out of Ariel's monologues.

I'd like to see more of Ariel's work with broader themes in Finnish culture and crime, but perhaps Nykänen has something new for Ariel in the pipeline.