The Fourth Man
A Thriller
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4.3 • 27 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Internationally renowned author Kjell Ola Dahl has attained cult status in his home country of Norway with his sharp, riveting bestsellers. Now, with his gripping and intelligent novel The Fourth Man, the master of Norwegian crime writing is crossing the Atlantic.
In the course of a routine police raid, Detective Inspector Frank Frølich of the Oslo Police saves Elizabeth Faremo from getting inadvertently caught in the crossfire. Some weeks later, Frølich coincidentally runs into her again—but their ensuing affair is no accident. By the time he learns that she is no stranger—but rather the sister of a wanted member of a larceny gang—it is already too late.
In the middle of one night, Frølich receives a call that a young guard has been killed in the course of a robbery. Scrambling to respond, he realizes that Elizabeth is no longer in his bed. In a turn of events cryptic, erotic, and complex, he finds himself a prime murder suspect and under the watch of his doubting colleagues. Led through the dark underworld of Oslo, Frølich must find out if he is being used . . . before his life unravels beyond repair.
The Fourth Man is a sexy, fast-paced psychological thriller that puts a modern twist on the classic noir story of the femme fatale. K.O. Dahl has crafted a dark, poetic, and incredibly complex crime novel for his US debut—the first in a series of detective novels from this rising international mystery star.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Little is as it seems in Norwegian author Dahl's U.S. debut, which features a tangled web of art theft, blackmail, torrid sex and double crosses. After femme fatale Elisabeth Faremo seduces Det. Insp. Frank Fr lich of the Oslo police, Frank learns Elisabeth has a brother, the thug Jonny Faremo, and Elisabeth has used Frank as part of an alibi to help Jonny beat a murder rap. Later, Frank discovers that Elisabeth's female university mentor, Reidun Vestli, is also her lover. Reidun eventually turns up dead, as do Elisabeth and Jonny. Frank becomes a suspect in Jonny's death even as he begins to understand how an old robbery is connected to the murders. The entertaining if overstuffed plot is undermined at times by Frank's strange lack of reaction to Elisabeth's death and an unprofessional approach to forensic evidence relevant to the twist ending. Still, scenes like the one in which Frank finds himself locked in a sauna, doomed to become wrinkled to death, combined with the clinical style, make for an exciting read.
