The Norwegian ambassador is found murdered in a Bangkok brothel. In Oslo, everyone rushes to cover up the scandal and dispatches to Thailand a police inspector, Harry Hole: he must conduct the investigation as confidentially as possible. Once in Bangkok’s seedy places—among opium dens and strip bars—Harry gradually discovers that the murder case is far from as obvious as it seemed at the start. Cockroaches rustle behind skirting boards. Someone is hiding in the dark, and that someone can’t stand daylight. For the first time in Russian: the long-awaited detective novel from the acknowledged master of the genre, the main rival of Stieg Larsson.