It begins as an ordinary missing person case. Annette Vetre is the daughter of the second most powerful woman in Norway’s ruling right-wing political party. She and her mother Carrie Lise Vetre don’t keep in touch and apparently the issue is not just that Annette – bright but lost young woman – is a member of a religious cult preaching disturbing things, and with her is her four-year-old son Wilhelm.
The investigation is carried out by the police commissioner Fredrik Beier. Missing person? How hard can it be? The last thing he needs is a complicated case while struggling with panic attacks, the memory of the death of his youngest son, and trying to convince the therapist that he is able-bodied. Once on Fredrik’s desk, however, the case of the missing Annette spirals out of control. It becomes a chase after an unspeakable brutal murderer and a search for the missing members of a monstrous cult that preaches the end of the world and conducts crazy racial purity experiments, the beginning of which is the years of World War Ⅱ when Hitler’s National Socialism tries to envenom the foundations of human civilization. In the midst of the war, a Norwegian version of Dr Mengele has goals, capable of terrifying even the cruellest Nazis. His malignant heritage is deeply rooted in our world, but today the lethal weapons are not tanks and guns but viruses and bacteria.
Several people, led by one of the three leaders of the cult Surlu or Light of God are killed, the rest are gone. In a secret basement beneath the cult’s mansion is a modern laboratory, where the things developed are still a mystery, but they must be important enough to cost human sacrifice. And who the hell is Per Ullsen, who seems to have all the answers, but whose existence is questionable.
Initially everything appears to indicate a vendetta between religious extremists, but something doesn’t add up. Fredrik Beier and his new partner from Special Services Kafa Iqbal want to be sure, because the religious topic is a rather sensitive one in a society living in fear of assassination attempts and extremism. As they suspect, the investigation takes a new and even more disturbing turn.
And someone is constantly breathing down their necks apart from the journalists and their bosses who need an excuse for the lack of clear results. A monster lurks in the shadows, faceless, ruthless, but with a definite purpose. To erase the memory of a decades-long folly, when a group of scientists found their little Secret Brotherhood from Vienna and begin the largest study in human history of racial characteristics among people. But the monster is only a puppet, an alarmingly perfect one. Someone out there, in the dark, is the puppeteer.
If you are a classic horror stories’ fan, with all their gory details, you will love this one. If not, you might want to skip a paragraph or two, just to make sure you will have a peaceful slumber. Still, this is a beautiful story in its own way with appealing and appalling scenes that touch thin strings in the reader’s soul. The suspension is constant, the atmosphere – befittingly Nordic and dark, almost gothic-like.
The Secret Brotherhood from Vienna is the debut novel by the Norwegian journalist and writer Ingar Johnsrud and the first of the trilogy about commissioner Fredrik Beier. Its appearance marks the birth of a new, refreshing, and extremely talented voice in the Scandinavian literature. It becomes a bestseller upon its release in 2015 and the rights for its publication are sold in more than 20 countries.
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Translation: Elisaveta Asparuhova