The Ninth Grave: A Fabian Risk Novel

The prologue of Ahnhem’s scathing second Fabian Risk novel (after 2016’s Victim Without a Face) recounts how a letter written by a dying Palestinian held prisoner in Israel in 1999 got mailed to a woman in Sweden. Flash forward to 2009, when the Swedish minister of justice disappears one day outside the parliament building in Stockholm. Risk’s boss orders the sympathetically drawn policeman, who’s plagued by conflicts between his job and his marriage, to undertake a secret search for the missing minister. Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, Dunja Hougaard, an edgy Danish homicide detective, probes the vicious murder of the wife of a popular TV star. Excerpts from the Palestinian prisoner’s letter point to the horrendous truth behind this and subsequent brutal slayings. In the end, Risk and Hougaard arrive at an interlocking solution to their respective investigations, and Ahnhem exposes the greed and corruption at the highest levels of society and government. Fans of Scandinavian noir won’t want to miss this disturbing thriller. [em](Dec.) [/em]