Sirkka feels she's doing the right thing when she kills her cruel stepfather. But there is a witness to the murder, the musician Eino. However, he helps Sirkka get rid of the dead body. Suspected by the police for the murder Sirkka flees abroad.
Katri is hired as a maid in Ruuhiniemi. Over the years, she works hard and even dares to dream of love and being the owner of the farm, but the scheming in the division of the inheritance complicate the future.
A thriller set in turn-of-the-century Helsinki, Stolen Death uses elements of German expressionism to tell the story of Finnish resistance fighters smuggling arms to overthrow the Tsarist occupiers of Finland. Tapiovaara stresses the divided loyalties of the Finnish bourgeoisie, torn between preserving their privileged economic position and taking a risky stand for an independent Finland. Stolen Death can be viewed as a thinly disguised protest against the rise of the fascist movement in Finland in the 1930s. Tapiovaara's allegorical indictment of class inequality and the suppression of free speech and political expression, coupled with his death at 28 fighting the Russians in the Winter War of 1939-1940, earned him almost a mythic status in Finland.
