Ulrik Torp

When the leader of one of Denmark’s major political parties is seriously injured in a car crash a mere three weeks before an election, two of his deputies vie to succeed him. But only one can emerge victorious, and a vicious, dirty-tricks campaign—marked by the unearthing of past indiscretions, malignant arm-twisting, and forged documents—ensues. Everyone else is just a pawn in this high-stakes game of chess, in which even the reporters covering the Danish Parliament have their own agendas.

Mere days before a critical parliamentary election in Denmark, a muckraking independent journalist is killed by a car bomb. Then, a promising young civil servant in the Danish Interior Ministry is found murdered, execution-style. It seems the two victims had recently gotten wind of widespread fraud and corruption at the highest levels of government.

When Denmark’s erstwhile Minister of Justice and Foreign Secretary dies suddenly from what appears to be a heart attack, down-on-his-luck journalist Ulrik Torp finds himself drawn into the case. Relegated to writing obituaries for a local paper, Torp is tasked with crafting the notice of the man’s untimely death—and then a former Member of Parliament expires under similarly suspicious circumstances. But who may have killed these two political archrivals, and why?