Oslo is sweating through a brutal summer when the first body turns up. A young woman lies in her apartment, staged with quiet precision. In her mouth, a small red five-pointed star. Not jewelry. Not a symbol of love. A signature.
Detective Harry Hole returns to a department that barely trusts him. The case is high-profile, the city is on edge, and the pressure is political. Harry gets a new partner, a polished investigator from Security Police with perfect manners and unreadable motives. Together they follow a trail of victims who seem unrelated. Different neighborhoods. Different lives. One common detail. The star.
Then the killings escalate. Each scene feels like a performance designed for an audience of one. Harry senses the murderer is not chasing attention. He’s testing the police. He’s testing Harry. And he’s hiding behind rules that only he understands.
As Harry pushes into Oslo’s night world, the heat turns the city into a pressure cooker. Leads rot fast. Witnesses lie. Evidence points in two directions at once. Harry starts to suspect the worst. The killer is inside the investigation’s blind spot.
When a private tragedy hits close to home, Harry breaks protocol and runs the case on instinct. He digs into old files, old grudges, and a pattern nobody wanted reopened. The more he learns, the clearer the trap becomes.
Someone is manufacturing trust.
Someone is writing the next crime scene in advance.
And the final star is meant for Harry.
