The first installment in the internationally bestselling Niels Oxen series

Niels Oxen is Denmark’s most highly decorated war hero – but now he’s a broken man, living rough in Rold Forest and surviving by recycling bottles and eating food discarded by supermarkets.

What begins as a desperate search for peace soon becomes a nightmare. After a nighttime visit to a medieval castle at the forest’s edge, Oxen finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of the castle’s owner – a former ambassador and founder of a powerful think tank.

Soon the Danish Security and Intelligence Service arrive on the scene, along with unconventional investigator Margrethe Franck. Before long, Oxen is drawn into a gripping investigation featuring af string of baffling murders linked by one chilling detail: hanged dogs.