The Emperor's Old Clothes - Frank Heller

HE BROKE INTO THE WRONG HOUSE. Copenhagen, 1912. Rikard Hegel writes adventure stories for a living, but has yet to experience an adventure himself. That changes one autumn night when too much whisky lands him in an intricate web of mysterious break-ins across the city - break-ins in which nothing has ever been stolen. Not a single thing. The trail leads to a Chinese antiques dealer operating from a darkened shopfront, an English detective newly arrived in the city, and a coat hiding something others are desperate to recover. What begins as an evening among writers, artists and drinkers in a Copenhagen wine-room becomes something stranger, more dangerous and far more improbable than anything Hegel ever put into fiction. The Emperor's Old Clothes is a classic of early Nordic crime fiction - a wry, sharp-witted adventure novel that moves like a dream and lands like a trap.