Given the ultimate chance to prove herself when a Russian defector walks into her post, brilliant young CIA officer Amanda Cole teams up with a fearless—and legendary—spy to unravel an international conspiracy—one shockingly linked to her father, a spy during the Cold War.

The Sufia Elmi case left inspector Kari Vaara with a scarred face, chronic insomnia, a constant migraine, and a full body count's worth of ghosts. Now it's a year later, in Helsinki. Kari and his beautiful American wife, Kate, have relocated here at her urging but it's a city where Kari has only bad memories. He is working the graveyard shift in the homicide unit, with a team that resents him as an overpaid Lapland hick, and a brilliant but egomaniacal...

After recovering from surgery for a brain tumor, Kari Vaara assumes leadership of a rogue black-ops unit while investigating the assassination of an immigrants' rights advocate at the height of xenophobic uprisings in Finland.