German audio rights for ALL THE KING’S MEN and STILL WATERS RUN DEEP by Elina Backman sold!

The rights were sublicensed to Germany‘s no.1 audiobook publisher Hoerbuch Hamburg and the audiobooks and printed books will be published simultaneously in February 2023 and June 2023.

Backman’s Saana Havas-series has sold over 50 000 copies in Finland and has publishers in 16 territories.

Rights are still available in the US, UK, Turkey, Greece, Latvia, France, Bulgaria, Spain etc.

In addition, the TV Series based on Elina Backman’s ALL THE KING’S MEN is fast progressing, in development with Aurora Studios!

Download the materials to Elina Backman’s titles here!

BOOK 4 THE BEAUTIFUL ISLAND (working title)
Planned publication 01/2024, Otava, Finland

It’s the next summer (previous books are set in summer-fall 2019). Saana is on vacation for the whole summer while Jan is working. Saana’s aunt Inkeri has promised to help with renovating her friend’s summer villa and she asks Saana to join them. The two travel for the island of Kaunissaari, ”Beautiful Island”, located by the city of Kotka, on the Southeast Coast of Finland, for a month and stay with Inkeri’s friend in her villa.
The house next door is a beautiful one, decorated by vines and in the shadow of trees, where a famous artist lives. She asks the neighbors to visit and tells them about her interesting life. Saana finds the woman interesting and watches her house in the evenings, seeing that visitors come every now and then.

A few days later the artist is found dead, to everyone’s surprise.
The police come from Kotka to state that the death seems natural. The woman was 81 years old. Inkeri’s friend, however, disagrees. She has keys to the house, and she’s been helping her neighbor for years. She thinks the artist was in good shape and suspects that there’s something completely different going on.

Saana begins asking around about the artist from Inkeri’s friend and the inhabitants of the island. Soon she finds out that everyone on the island has their own theory on what happened to the artist. None of the theories line up with the police’s explanation.
In Helsinki, Jan begins investigating a case where a famous gallerist has committed suicide, but her loved ones suspect a crime, for there is one piece of art missing from the walls. It’s been made by the same artist who lives on Kaunissaari.

A woman working for a law firm approaches Saana Havas to help with the mystery of her sister’s death, who was found dead in a swamp near the Angeli village in Northern Lapland in 1998. Murderer was never caught, and the police have given up on the case. Saana promises to help her, and travels to the North and investigates as the winter and polar night keeps creeping closer. As she investigates the old case, she also finds time to ponder on her own roots. An old photograph shows her parents in love at the top of the Saana fell. By the time Saana was born, they all lived in Helsinki, and as the years passed her father returned to the North and her mother stayed in the South.

Things take a threatening turn when another girl is found dead in Inari. What happened in the North all those years ago? Has the murderer come back after all these year? Who is trustworthy? Who has been carrying secrets inside themselves all these years? Set in both Helsinki and Lapland, this book is both a fascinating thriller and a detective novel about love, secrets, the magic of Lapland and nature, which acts as a silent witness.

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP
Book #2 in Saana Havas-series

by Elina Backman

Is evil lurking beneath the calm waters? Still Waters Run Deep is an awaited sequel to the bestselling All The Kings Men!

Three young men are making a documentary film about a mystical hermit, living in the Isle of Sheep in Helsinki. First one of them disappears, then another one. When one of them is found dead in the nearby nature reserve, the police becmes involved.

Saana Havas, recovering from burnout, hears that her  colleague’s younger brother has gone missing and decides to set up a true crime podcast to help with the search. Meanwhile, police commissioner Jan Leino and his team are investigating the disappearance and possible murder of the documentary makers.

When young men disappear and die, it’s ofter regarded just an accident. But could it be that someone is actually hunting for them?

ALL THE KING’S MEN
Book #1 in Saana Havas-series

Saana has been fired from her job as a click-bait journalist, so she decides to spend a summer with her aunt in a small-town Hartola. It sounds like a perfect opportunity to take it easy and recover. But when Saana begins to dig into a case of a teenage girl who died 30 years earlier, the peace of the small town is shaken.

Meanwhile in Helsinki a fire-marked body is found at Suomenlinna Sea Fortress, and crime investigator Jan Leino and his team have a new case in their hands. However, the investigation isn’t going anywhere, and Jan fears that the murder at King’s Gate a is just the beginning…

Saana and Jan continue working on their own cases until their paths cross – for more than one reason.