A detective's genius bites back.
Cnut's Saturday afternoon is disturbed by his boss, Politimester Alex Skanvik, with a request to investigate what has been reported as a suicide. A retired army oberst, now a hotelier, has died from a shotgun blast, and Cnut has drawn the short straw.
He quickly realises that the oberst did not take his own life, and Nil Nilsen's death is only the first of a bizarre set of hotelier murders that create for the detective a complicated puzzle. Are they connected? Apparently not, and yet Cnut believes that they must be. At least twenty people had strong motive for the first killing alone, including every one of the colourful and disfunctional members of Nilsen's own household.
In the shadows is the Landenar Corporation; a shady outfit, which is buying up hotels and B&Bs in the area, committing crimes against family animals and property, whenever their offers to purchase are refused. Nilsen had been approached by them shortly before his death, and another B&B owner's wife died in suspicious circumstances, shortly after an offer made by Landenar for the property was turned down.
The deaths multiply, presenting Cnut with another possibility. He is considering that the murders subsequent to Nilsen's could be the killer's version of the Three-Card Monte trick - to 'Hide the Lady', where innocents are killed at random, to throw investigators off the track.
In a strange twist to the case, he finds out that three of the murders could have a connection to a deadly incident in Afghanistan, years before.
When he believes he knows who carried out the murders, he is faced with the biggest problem of his professional life - a detective's nightmare.
He has to play God, in the fight between what he believes to be justice, with all its ramifications, and the strict legal requirements of the law that he is paid to follow to the letter. Not only that - he needs to have Ilse on his side in his final decision.
His professional life will never be the same again.
