Bio

Janus Lucky

Janus Lucky writes murder mysteries and coming-of-age fiction in the Nordic Noir tradition — crime with heat, heart and teeth, and LGBTQ+ characters who are never an afterthought.

At the centre of his work is the Pekka Wall series. Pekka is an older, well-heeled, sharp-tongued editor who becomes a reluctant detective: a man who refuses to play by the rules and who carries his grief, his loyalties and his appetites into every case. Around him moves a recurring cast — the novelist Tuomas, the photographer Tiina — and a set of preoccupations the series returns to again and again: the inescapable pull of the past, the machinery of power and blackmail, and love as a form of resistance.

The books range widely in tone and form. Handful is a tender, funny coming-of-age story of first love in a Finnish university town. The Crack in the Wall is a lean, haunting origin novella set in a pitiless Helsinki winter. The novels — The Birthmark Murders — Death is a Cabaret, Old Chum, The Triumvirate Murders — Death as a Business Expense, and The Māori Murders — Death of Dreams — carry the series from Finland to Aotearoa, where a family comes under siege amid corruption and quiet defiance.

Finnish-born and now living in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, New Zealand, Janus writes for readers who want their crime fiction character-driven, emotionally honest and darkly witty — Nordic Noir that keeps its pulse.