Maria Kallio ist eigentlich nur Aushilfspolizistin (hauptberuflich Jurastudentin), aber ihr direkter Vorgesetzter ist aufgrund seiner Alkoholkrankheit länger krankgeschrieben, weswegen sie gleich die Aufklärung eines mutmaßlichen Mordfalls übertragen bekommt:Ein Studentenchor aus Helsinki hält ein gemeinsames Probenwochenende in einer einsam gelegenen Villa am See ab. Am Morgen nach einem feuchtfröhlichen Abend liegt Jukka Peltonen, einer der Sänger, jedoch tot am Bootsteg. Und es liegt nahe, den Täter oder die Täterin unter den restlichen Chormitgliedern zu suchen. Maria kennt zufälligerweise das Opfer und ein paar der Chorleute: Ihre ehemalige Mitbewohnerin war einige Zeit mit Jukka zusammen.Jukka selbst war ein Frauenheld, der sich wenig um die Gefühle seiner jeweils aktuellen Freundin(nen) scherte; darüber hinaus war er in krumme Geschäfte im Drogen- und Zuhältermilieu verwickelt. Maria hat also ein paar Baustellen, an denen sie ermitteln muss: War vielleicht eine der Frauen auf Jukka eifersüchtig oder handelte aus enttäuschter Liebe? Hatte jemand bei Jukka Schulden, die er nicht zurückzahlen konnte? Oder kam der Täter doch von außerhalb?Ich habe eine Weile gebraucht, ehe ich mit Maria warm wurde. Zuerst schien sie mir ein bisschen zu sehr auf Biegen und Brechen als „Powerfrau“ entworfen, aber im Laufe der Geschichte mochte ich sie ganz gerne leiden. Im Original erschien „Alle singen im Chor“ bereits 1993, und zu diesem Zeitpunkt schien es auch im emanzipierten Norden noch nicht allzu weit her zu sein mit der Gleichberechtigung. Frauen traute man zumindest im Polizeidienst noch nicht allzu viel mehr zu als Kaffeekochen und Unterlagen abzuheften, und entsprechend muss Maria nebenher noch gegen den Machismo ihrer Kollegen kämpfen. Wie sie sich so durchbeißt, fand ich schließlich doch noch ganz sympathisch.Die Handlung selbst ist angenehm unblutig – eher ein klassischer Krimi also, kein Serienkiller mit immer krasseren Mordmethoden und keine abgefahrenen Folterszenarien. Muss ja auch nicht immer sein.Was mich manchmal ein bisschen aus dem Lesefluss gebracht hat: Bisweilen hat Maria eine Eingebung und besucht dann beispielsweise eine Verdächtige, es wird aber erst danach in einem Nebensatz erklärt, wie Maria jetzt genau auf diese Verdächtige kam. Man wundert sich noch, wieso denn diese Person Jukka getötet haben soll und bekommt die Erklärung dann irgendwann später geliefert. Das war bisweilen etwas holprig, kommt aber zum Glück nicht so oft vor.Ansonsten hat mir die Geschichte gut gefallen und ich werde auf jeden Fall bald die nächsten Bücher dieser Reihe lesen – Maria bietet noch einiges an Potenzial, ich bin gespannt, wie es mit ihr weitergeht. Und ins schöne Helsinki lass ich mich sowieso immer wieder gerne versetzen.
Leena Lehtolainen’s novel “My First Murder” begins with a member of a student choir getting killed during a practice session outing in Helsinki, Finland. I did not like the book at all, but the opinion is mainly based on my specific tastes in mystery, suspense, and thriller novels. Other readers, with different tastes, may like the book a lot, and rate it highly. In a sense, the novel resembles a “closed-group whodunit”; we are basically told that only one of the seven choir members may be the killer. However, unlike in many classical mysteries, it is not an amateur who attempts to solve the case, but an actual police detective. There are some “police procedural” threads in the novel, but the fact that the detective (Maria Kallio) is friends with or at least an acquaintance of the suspects makes the police procedural thread not quite plausible. A “closed-group whodunit” happens to be my least favorite genre, because I am absolutely not interested in solving the puzzle.I love reading books because I like learning about people, places, and cultures. For instance, I learned about Glasgow from Denise Mina, about Paris from Georges Simenon, and about Amsterdam from Nicholas Freeling. The only thing I learned about Finland from the novel was that its inhabitants have propensity for heavy drinking. The book does not convey any feel for the place and the plot could be happening anywhere. Nor did I learn anything about human psychology and motives of human behavior from this novel. It is full of amateurish, pop psychology, on the level of college freshmen class. The writing is far from stellar; particularly the dialogues sound stilted and not realistic. I am not sure whether it is the writer’s or the translator’s fault. A lot of descriptions are totally redundant - do we really need to know how ice cream cone melts on Ms. Kallio’s shirt?The book gets a little bit more interesting towards the end and, as I mentioned earlier, readers with taste in mystery different than mine may rate it much higher. However, for me, the genre, the lack of depth and lame writing/translation are worth onlyOne and a half stars.
Do You like book My First Murder (2012)?
My very first thought for this review is that if you are the kind of person who is able to easily participate in gossip and life-chatter, you will enjoy this book. Otherwise, it's not anything you should think of picking up. There was a lot of reflection on the main character's past that had nothing at all to do with what was happening with the murder case and there were so many characters that there actually has to be a character chart at the back of the book. I applaud someone wanting to take a large group of people and make them suspects in a murder mystery, but there's no mystery if you can't figure out what is going on. I think the only thing I got out of this book was that I knew what the murder weapon was and how it was discovered. I read to the end and I know who is guilty, but I'm still not very sure how this all came to be, because of all of the extra reminiscing and irrelevant jumble that were the beefy portions of the book. If all of the unnecessary chatter was edited from the story, I would have to say this would be a very short book indeed, but might be a good mystery.
—Mirrani
This is the first book in Leena Lehtolainen’s Finnish crime series starring Detective Maria Kallio, 23, who started as a police officer, then studied law, and now is back as a substitute officer for six months. She fights sexism in the police department, as well as flack from her family and boyfriend about her career. Then she's assigned to a murder case, and the victim is a golden boy from a wealthy and well-known family in Helsinki. Tommi Peltonen drowned during a weekend spent with friends at his parents' house, and it's not clear if it is an accident or a homicide. To complicate things further, Kallio know most of the suspects and was once close to a couple of them.Despite her feelings of friendship, Kallio is persistent and manages to uncover various secrets and tensions within the group. I like to read about Finland; a close friend was born there, then was adopted by an American couple when she was 3 years old. This mystery is firmly set in Helsinki, and features unique Finnish customs such as amateur choral groups of young adults who compete to see which group is the best. Kallio is resigned to her life. She doesn't really expect to get what she wants and is struggling to figure out what she wants to do. I liked this enough to read the second in the series.
—Toni Moore
I did not like this book. The story is slow and messy, it just didn't draw me in. For me, the main problem was the narrator, Maria. A book written in first pesrson narrative can be very boring if the narrator is not interesting enough. And I found Maria Kallio a really tedious character. She is a disaster, with an inferiority complex and unable to do anything properly. I suppose the writer tries to give an idea of anarchic rebelliousness but the image I get of this character is one of utterly in
—Susana
