The Fourth Man-K.O. Dahl

The Fourth Man
K.O. Dahl
Dunne, Mar 2008, $23.95
ISBN: 9780312375690

Oslo Detective Inspector Frank Frolich sees the woman leisurely walking the aisles of the shop where no customers should have been as the police are about to raid the store. He rushes inside and tackles her to the floor just a nanosecond before bullets fly. He learns the witness he saved is Elisabeth Faremo.

A grateful Elisabeth begins seeing Frank, but soon learns she conned the cop as she expertly uses him as an alibi for her brother Jonny, a hood who apparently got away with murder. Already upset with Elisabeth for using him, but unable to let her go as she has him hooked; he becomes angry to learn she has another lover. His rival is university advisor Reidun Vestli. While Frank wonders about how to compete with a female for another woman’s affection, someone kills Reidun and soon afterward the Faremo siblings. As his peers at the Oslo Police Department consider him the prime suspect in the three homicides, Frank uncovers a link to an art robbery, but how to prove that is the motive when the love triangle is current and obvious.

This enjoyable femme fatale Danish police procedural will grip the audience from the moment Frank and Elisabeth meet as she quickly hooks him with sex. The story line is fast-paced and the key four players fully developed so that the audience understands the dysfunctional interrelationships that are keys to the plot. However that also leaves a fatal flaw as Frank’s reaction to Elisabeth’s murder seems to clinically cold for someone who was a slave to her sexuality; fans who can ignore this defect will enjoy THE FOURTH MAN.
Harriet Klausner