The Iranian author Sara Santanda decided she would no longer live in hiding after Iranian priests called a fatwa over her when she wrote about a corrupt mullah.   Four million dollar is her death worth.  Her first public appearance since she went into hiding will be in Denmark, she'll be the guest of Lise Carlsen, journalist for the newspaper Politiken.  Inspector Per Toftlund will be responsible for the woman's safety, and he's well aware that four million dollars is an incentive a fanatic or a hired killer wouldn't let pass without trying something.

And there is a hired killer.  A Serbian who learned the craft during the ugly war in his country is the perfect man: he is good with weapons, he is good at disguising himself, and he speaks Danish like a Dane.  Under normal circumstances the little bit of moral he has left would protest since he and the author have mutual enemies, but this lot of money can buy a safe place now that the war in the former Yugoslavia is running on its end and there were simply too much atrocities committed, the world would demand the guilty ones to be brought to trial and he'd be one of them.

Our killer has a problem.  Oh, going to Denmark isn't one of them, excellently forged papers and an excellent cover take care of that.  Finding out long enough in advance where Sara Santanda will appear in public is the problem.  Per Toftlund has a problem too: where would be the least unsafe place for the woman to give her press-conference?  And Lise Carlsen has a problem as well, be it a personal one, whe she notices that her relationship is cooling down and she's not even sure if she wants it to warm up again or not.

The book starts with an introduction of the skills of Vuk, the killer, and from there on it simply never looses pace.  Sure, there are moments the story takes its time to catch its breath, but it isn't until the finale that it allows you to let go of it.  I can tell you it's a bad idea to start reading this late one evening.  And still it's more than just pace and action, in fact the action is mostly limited to the beginning and the end.  Leif Davidsen manages to make the preparations of both the killer and the cop very interesting to read, and he takes just enough time to tell us what we need to know about our protagonists.

Mind you, this isn't just a thriller.  There's room for a cynical view on politics, and journalists don't come entirely spotless out of it either.  It's this mixture of action, almost satire, romance even, the killer's detailed preparation, and the very living actors in this game that make this a book that is extremely hard to put down.