Death in Oslo [Paperback]

Washington D. C., January 2005, Helen Lardahl Bentley takes the oath of office as the first female president of the United States. As the crowd cheers, President Bentley is thinking, "I got away with it . . . ."

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, businessman Abdallah al-Rahman is watching the inaugural event on television from his soundproof exercise room. To no one he says, "She actually thinks she got away with it!"

And in Oslo, Norway, watching the televised event, Hanne Wilhemsen speculates about the new president's spotless past to her friend, former FBI profiler Johanne Vik, and muses, "But there's always something . . . some little secret . . . ."

Thus begins "Death in Oslo," Anne Holt's intricately plotted third entry in the Adam Stubo-Johanne Vik series. This fast-paced thriller with Machiavellian overtones really takes off when President Bentley, on her first official state visit to Norway, disappears from her locked and guarded hotel room in the middle of the night. Immediately, the security forces of both countries scramble to find the missing head of state before the unthinkable happens. The task is complicated by territorial tensions between the two national security forces and infighting within the FBI. When Warren Scifford, head of a much-resented specialized team within the FBI, arrives on the scene to take charge of the American investigation, he requests that his former student, Johanne Vik, be assigned from Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service to help him. But Johanne doesn't work for the NCIS so Scifford instead asks for Johanne's husband, Adam Stubo. But Johanne has her own secrets from the past regarding her former FBI mentor and threatens Adam that, if he accepts the assignment to work with Scifford, their marriage is over. Adam, however, cannot turn his back on duty and reluctantly reports to work, angry that Johanne has chosen not to confide in him about this man from her past. Everyone, it seems, has "some little secret."

Anne Holt is a master at creating chilling characters whose scariest quality is their immense patience in stalking their victims. The international scale of "Death in Oslo" ups the ante for the consequences of failure in the eternal war of good versus evil. The ups and downs of Johanne's and Adam's domestic life provide an effective counterbalance to the international feuding between nations. This is definitely a suspense thriller you'll want to read, even if you haven't read the first two.

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