Kaldan and Scháfer Mystery

Danish journalist Heloise Kaldan is in the middle of a nightmare. One of her sources has been caught lying, and she could lose her job over it. Then she receives the first in a series of cryptic and unsettling letters from a woman named Anna Kiel. Wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of a young lawyer three years earlier, Anna hasn't been seen by anyone since she left the crime scene covered in blood. The police think she's fled the country until homicide detective Erik Scháfer comes up with a lead after the reporter who originally wrote about the case is found murdered in his apartment. Has Anna Kiel struck again, or is there more than one killer at large? And why does every clue point directly to Heloise Kaldan? Meanwhile, the letters keep coming, and they hint at a connection between Anna and Heloise. As Heloise starts digging deeper, she realizes that to tell Anna's story she will have to revisit the darkest parts of her own past-confronting someone she swore she'd never see again. The Corpse Flower is the first in the #1 bestselling Danish crime series, the Kaldan and Scháfer mysteries.

When ten-year-old Lukas disappears from his Copenhagen school, police investigators discover that the boy had a peculiar obsession with pareidolia: a phenomenon that makes him see faces in random things. A photo on his phone, posted just hours before his disappearance, shows an old barn door that resembles a face. Journalist Heloise Kaldan thinks she recognizes the barn, but from where? When Lukas's blood-flecked jacket is found in the moat at Copenhagen's Citadel, DNA evidence points to Thomas Strand, a former soldier suffering from severe PTSD. But then Strand turns up dead in his apartment, shot in the head execution style. What did the last person to see Lukas really witness that morning in the school yard? Was it really Lukas, or was it an optical illusion? Can you ever truly trust your eyes?

When Jan Frischof, a dying elderly man, gives a deathbed confession too unbelievable to be true, journalist Heloise Kaldan immediately knows there's a deeper story to uncover. Her gut soon proves to be right-Jan immediately backtracks and warns her that they will both be in danger if she asks any more questions. Could this kind and elderly man really be a cold-blooded killer? Heloise quickly realizes that this is a darker, and far more complicated, investigation. Jan is clearly afraid of something, but who or what he's afraid of could be a dangerous question for Heloise to find the answer to. As she digs deeper, Heloise begins to see that Jan's confession is connected to a string of decades-old disappearances. But next of kin and police are lying to her at every turn, and she has no idea what else Jan could be hiding. Enlisting her friend, detective inspector Erik Schäfer, Heloise begins her descent into the past, unsure of what she will unearth.