Helena Halme grew up in Tampere, central Finland, and moved to the UK at the age of 22 via Stockholm and Helsinki. She spent the first ten years in Britain working as journalist and translator for the BBC, where she was first to report on the Chernobyl disaster and on Swedish Premier Palme's murder. Helena now lives in North London and runs the Finnish-British charity, Finn-Guild. She loves Nordic Noir and thinks in another life she might have been a blonde Birgitte Nyborg from Borgen. Helena has published three novels, The Englishman, Coffee and Vodka, and The Red King of Helsinki.