The first book in Edgar-nominated Anne Holt's international
bestselling mystery series featuring detective Hanne Wilhelmsen, last
seen in 1222.
A small-time drug dealer is found battered to death on the outskirts of
the Norwegian capital, Oslo. A young Dutchman, walking aimlessly in
central Oslo covered in blood, is taken into custody but refuses to
talk. When he is informed that the woman who discovered the body, Karen
Borg, is a lawyer, he demands her as his defender, although her
specialty is civil, not criminal, law.
A couple of days later another lawyer is found shot to death. Soon
police officers Håkon Sand and Hanne Wilhelmsen establish a link between
the two killings. They also find a coded message hidden in the murdered
lawyer's apartment. Their maverick colleague in the drugs squad, Billy
T., reports that a recent rumor in the drug underworld involves
drug-dealing lawyers. Now the reason why the young Dutchman insisted on
having Karen Borg as a defender slowly dawns on them: since she was the
one to find and report the body, she is the only Oslo lawyer that cannot
be implicated in the crime.
As the officers investigate, they uncover a massive network of
corruption leading to the highest levels of government. As their lives
are threatened, Hanne and her colleagues must find the killer and, in
the process, bring the lies and deception out into the open.
