Karo Hämäläinen Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Karo Hämäläinen is an author of fiction. Born in 1976, she has not always written and actually spent fifteen years life working as an economics reporter. She has changed jobs a bit and now works with the acclaimed leading literary publication in Finland as managing editor of its publication Parnasso. She also works as a stockbroker and knows the financial world fairly well. She writes fiction books for children, young adults, and adults.

Her debut novel was titled The Buyout. It debuted nicely and it ended up being put on the shortlist to win the 2011 Savonia Prize. It did win successfully a short time later when it was the recipient of the Tampere Literary Prize just one year later in 2012. She ended up winning the prize that his first novel missed out on in 2016 when his novel alone won the Savonia Prize.

Karo is the author of several novels, not all of which have been successfully translated. Her novel “Errotoja”, or Separator, was also published in 2011. It is the story of how the financial crisis is picking up at the turn of the century in October 2008. His most recent book was a collaboration with the author Owe Witesman and is titled Cruel is the Night. Cruel is the Night was inspired by the works of the great Agatha Christie. It is the first novel by Hamalainen that has been translated by the prize-winning author and is a comedy involving murder.

When three mobile phones go off in a luxurious suite in London, none of them are answered because the people that own them are dead. No one’s coming to the phone! Four current friends and former lovers had met earlier that night for a reunion dinner of sorts. Robert and Miko hadn’t seen each other in about a decade. That’s because they have an ongoing feud based on Miko’s resentment that Robert made his money based on shady ethics. But Miko doesn’t know that it’s his wife that slept with the man he hates the last time that they were together.

Robert’s wife Elise is young and pretty and has no grudges with the rest to bear, but she will still be caught up in a fray of murder as the night goes on. Everyone is a suspect for the most part as they all had problems with each other. With motives set and an array of deadly weapons in plain sight that could easily have been utilized, only one may end up alive by the end of the night. It’s no surprise that this acclaimed novel is being translated so that it can be read globally!

Karo has spent some time traveling and lived in Munich, Berlin, and Tampere equally before moving on to where she currently resides in Helsinki. Karo enjoys reading and running in the spare time she has and her record for running a marathon stands at three hours, four minutes, and four seconds.

The Sixth Step is her first adult novel. This is the story of four totally different people that have their tales interlinked. This book focuses on the distance that lies between everyone. It may be true that it’s a small world, but some people can feel totally alone even though they are surrounded by people. Even when living with people or having neighbors and routines and friends, we may be more interlinked than we think.

Based on the concept of ‘six degrees of separation’, this story proposes that the distance from any one person to another is six steps. So you may not know someone, we are all interlinked in some way. They are all very different people. Jyrki is a mathematician that lives in Helsinki. His hobby is tracking euro coins and trying to understand the world and control it by numbers and order. He is joined in the novel by the photographer Jorge from Barcelona who also tracks consumer habits, and journalist Jürgen, who is struggling to understand how religious communities can cope with the transition into the modern world and modern demands.

This is the story of four men, still young in life, and their stories and lives leap off the page as a woman named Anna glides through each of their lives. Pick up this stunning novel from Karo Hämäläinen and see how just six steps can often be all that keeps us apart!

Separator is another highly acclaimed fiction novel from Karo Hämäläinen. There are a lot of problems in the world, and one of the biggest ones can often be money. Money that invites secrecy, that boosts someone’s obsession, or politics or indiscretions driving actions that ruin people’s lives and careers. It can be the motivator for money, betrayal, abandoning a family, or screwing over an investor.

It’s October of 2008, and in Finland, a portfolio manager is quietly fighting for his investors. Rainer Olavi Oraspää is managing a huge investment fund and needs to have the backs of the people who trusted him but also maintained their old interest as well. A new owner soon convinces the partners to sell their asset management house. It was set up all the way back in the nineties. This time a rival to the founding house wants to buy back the pricey Swedish company into its assets library for an affordable price.

The controller of the company suddenly disappears without any notice, and it’s then that a huge bubble is revealed in what they were counting on to be a successful fund. Anything can happen in the game, and the capital market is spurring some crazy actions to go down. Is anyone paying attention to the laws, or is it now officially an ‘anything goes’ type of market where legality is spurned for full-on chaos?

The new climate is throwing old loyalties to the test. At the end of the day, it’s picking up speed so quickly that the end result might just be a full-on massacre. Old alliances and relationships are thrown to the wind, and at the end of the day, it’s anyone’s guess what’s going to happen when all the dust settles. Want to find out for yourself? Pick up this book or stay tuned for a translation of Separator to find out!