Join the hunt for Oxen - Jens Henrik Jensen

JENS HENRIK JENSEN

POLITIKEN LITERARY AGENCY

MARGRETHE one-legged cool FRANK Margrethe Franck, thirty-nine, works for the Danish intelligence service, PET. When Franck was a young police officer, her leg was crushed by a thief trying to escape in a car. She killed him, but too late. The leg had to be amputated above the knee.

he just wants to be left alone ‌

NIELS OXEN

Niels Oxen, forty-four, a war veteran and former member of the elite Danish military unit JĂŚgerkorpset, has participated in a series of overseas missions, initially in the Balkans. Oxen was a police cadet for a short period of time.

Niels Oxen suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder: PTSD. He is haunted by recurring nightmares known as ‘The Seven’: seven nightmares relating to his wartime experiences, which continue to torment him. Even while awake, he’s plagued by flashbacks, and has many of the classic symptoms of PTSD, including difficulty forming close bonds and showing trust.

Niels Oxen is the only Danish soldier ever to be awarded the nation’s highest honour: the Cross of Valour. He fought down eight Taliban fighters single-handed, saving his group, which had been ambushed during a patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Niels Oxen is divorced and has a thirteen-year-old son, Magnus, whom he hasn’t seen for many years.

Franck is a single, cool-looking woman who lives and breathes for her work. She o en wears an earring – a silver chain that winds all the way up the edge of one ear – and she loves her tuned-up Morris Mini.

She has experienced PTSD first-hand a er the incident with her leg, but has dealt with her trauma. Franck’s most precious possession is her watch, a Breitling Colt she got from her parents when she woke up a er the amputation.

The watch bears the inscription ‘Per aspera ad astra’: Through difficulty to the stars.

prince of darkness or angel of light

AXEL MOSSMAN Axel Mossman, in his early sixties, was head of the Danish intelligence service, PET, for many years. Mossman is an enormous, corpulent man. He has English ancestry, and overall Mossman’s demeanour is that of an Anglophile.

It was Mossman who saw potential in Margrethe Franck and made her his personal assistant.

The intelligence services boss is known for his many strong international connections. He has a formidable intellect and is a master of navigating his way through a world of secret agendas. The question is: is Mossman a prince of darkness or an angel of the light?

Photo: Red Star

CAST

CHRISTIAN SONNE

Anxious officer

Christian Sonne, in his late thirties, is Axel Mossman’s nephew. Sonne is a police officer – father of two girls, divorced and in financial trouble.

a powerful network

Sonne – the least prominent of the four main characters – is introduced in book two, where he helps his uncle. Only reluctantly does he make an appearance in book three. Christian Sonne is anxious by nature, but good with his hands when it comes to electronics or wire-tapping, for instance.

DANEHOF KARIN ‘KAJSA’ CORFITZEN, in her mid forties, is the first of the three leaders of the Danehof organisation to be introduced. She’s a top economist and resides in London. When her father is murdered in the first book, she becomes the head of Danehof’s think tank Consilium.

VILLUM GRUND-LÖWENBERG, in his mid forties, is introduced as the head of Danehof South in the second book. He is aristocratic, trained as a computer scientist and co-founder of the highly successful listed company Castle & Unicorn, which has its head office in Switzerland.

JOHAN WOLF-WITTE, in his early sixties, is first introduced at the end of the trilogy as the leader of Danehof East – and therefore the most senior leader in the network. Until then he remains a shadowy figure. He is President of the Supreme Court – i.e. the head of Denmark’s highest court.

Danehof’s objective is to influence Danish life and politics at the highest level.

WHA DA

Photo: Roberto Fortuna

Danehof – a powerful modern network with roots in the Middle Ages.

AT IS NEHOF? In Jens Henrik Jensen’s trilogy, Danehof is a network consisting of three departments: Danehof North, South and East. There’s no ‘West’, because Danehof has its roots in the Middle Ages, when the western part of the country was virtually uninhabited.

The objective of the modern incarnation of Danehof is to maintain power, pu ing it in the hands of a circle of specially selected people from the highest echelons of society. But the network’s more specific role is to set the agenda in Danish society, influencing people’s lives and the political decision-making process.

In order to influence political debate and set the social agenda,

the network operates through another organisation: Consilium, a widely known and respected liberal think tank.

Danehof used to exist in reality. Founded in 1282, it was the name of the Danish parliament in the Middle Ages, which met at Nyborg Castle on the island of Fyn, in what was then the capital of the realm. There the king met with ‘the kingdom’s best men’, both sacred and secular: everything from bishops and princes to officers of the Crown and important lords. Danehof had legislative, judiciary and political functions. First and foremost, however, it was designed to limit the power of the king, just as England’s Magna Carta did, for instance.

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90,000 COPIES ALREADY SOLD IN DENMARK

ABOUT THE SERIES HANGDOGS Denmark’s most highly decorated soldier, now a traumatized war veteran, Niels Oxen, only emerges from his basement room when darkness falls.

He survives by collecting bo les and stealing food waste from supermarkets.

Hoping to find peace from his inner demons, he and his dog move into the country’s largest area of forest, Rold Skov, where he sets up camp, intending to live the simple life.

But the dream turns into a nightmare. A er a night-time visit to a medieval castle on the edges of the forest, Oxen finds himself suspected of murdering the castle’s owner, a former ambassador and founder of an influential think tank.

The Danish intelligence services show up at the scene strikingly quickly, and before he knows where he is, the harried war veteran is drawn into an investigation of a series of murders that apparently have only one thing in common: hanging dogs ‌ Margrethe Franck is assigned to assist Oxen. Secrets and mistrust make cooperating extremely difficult, but slowly the two of them join forces in the hunt for the killer, whose motive is still u erly unclear.

Hangdogs

The investigation leads Oxen and Franck back to the medieval Danish parliament, a powerful organisation known as Danehof, Oxen and Franck come face to face with a highly modern and elite network – one that is secretly pulling the strings of Danish society and influencing people’s lives without any scruples as to method.

DARK MEN Niels Oxen, lives and works under Romanian identity at a remote fish farm in Jutland. The post-traumatic stress syndrome suffering veteran lives in a state of constant alertness: he has a secret that keeps him alive – but it might also kill him. When a curator is murdered in a castle and the Danish Minister of Justice is involved, an avalanche of violent events is set in motion. Only few people spot the connection to Oxen. One of them is his old partner Margrethe Franck from the Police Intelligence Force. When she finally manages to locate him, she seals his fate.

Suddenly Oxen finds himself in the middle of a manhunt. Some will help him.

Some will kill him. But who is friend and who is foe? Franck and Oxen are reunited against the dark men who hold the power. For the haunted war veteran there are only two options: go get them or go down.

Dark Men FROZEN FLAMES Military veteran Niels Oxen is presumed dead a er an accident at sea. In reality he’s holed up on an island in the Swedish archipelago, mulling over the dilemma before him.

If the leaders of the secretive but powerful network Danehof discover that their a empt on his life failed, they will begin a relentless manhunt for him as they seek to correct their mistake. If the Danish police finds out that he’s alive, he’ll be arrested and accused of a murder he didn’t commit.

Against all odds, Oxen decides to make a stand against those in power. If he doesn’t, he’ll spend the rest of his life running – with no hope of seeing his son again.

Facing an impossible task, he contacts his former partner from the intelligence service, Margrethe Franck, who has been fired. The two of them again join forces together with their former head of the intelligence service, Axel Mossman, and his nephew.

Frozen

The fight against Danehof has had momentous consequences for them all. They’re like frozen flames, and they can only get their lives back by defeating the shadowy group of men.

But how do you fight an invisible enemy?

JENSEN:

OXEN IS A SIMPLE STORY

WITHIN

AN

INTRICATE PLOT ABOUT JENS HENRIK JENSEN Jens Henrik Jensen is fi y-three.

Having trained as a journalist he worked for twenty-five years in the news industry, including as a news editor. He is married and has two boys aged five and seven. In his free time he’s interested in nature, fishing, film, art and football.

Photo: Niels Lund

When I began working on Hangdogs I had no idea it would turn into a coherent, 1,434-page-long trilogy. But it didn’t take long before I realised that the main character, Niels Oxen, and the overarching plot had potential for more. And that it wouldn’t do Oxen or the story full justice to finish it off in a single volume.

The Oxen trilogy is – hopefully – a subtle, challenging and multi-layered tale about how raw and overwhelming power can transform over time and manifest itself in the modern world. About how that power might resort to unacceptable means, including liquidation and corruption.

So, across all three volumes, the trilogy becomes a disturbing story of power with clear contemporary resonance, set in a familiar Scandinavian democracy.

That’s my intention ‌ But I also think that the trilogy can be seen from a completely different perspective: as one single huge story about a man, Niels Oxen, who has been highly decorated for rescuing others. He has paid a terrible price, and is tormented by trauma to the point where, at the beginning of the trilogy, he flees deep into the forest to ba le his inner demons.

The simple thing about the narrative is the human journey. The question of whether Oxen is able to save himself.

The idea for my main character grew out of previous books, in which I focused on war veterans. It’s an acknowledged phenomenon that an unknown number of veterans seek shelter and solitude in the Danish forests from spring into the autumn.

I wanted to challenge myself and my readers with a different type of main character, one whose traumas and insights a er a life on the edge lend him a certain substance, I hope.

The reception of the trilogy has been absolutely brilliant. Glancing back over my shoulder, I have no simple explanation. But I’ve o en heard people remark that one of the reasons the first book, Hangdogs, was fascinating was because it took a different approach from the usual crime novels. They generally take place in the big city, but here the reader is taken out of Copenhagen and into the deep, dark forest.

It seems that Niels Oxen, with his backstory and his distinctive world, makes such a strong impression that readers have become very loyal to him as a character. They’ve even queued up to get the third and final instalment in the trilogy, The Frozen Flames.

For that I’m grateful – and proud.

Best wishes,

Jens Henrik Jensen

★★★★★

★★★★★

JYSK FYNSKE MEDIER

JYDSKEVESTKYSTEN

★★★★★★

”There has never been wri en a Danish thriller on such a high level as Jens Henrik Jensen delivers with Hangdogs.”

HORSENS FOLKEBLAD

★★★★★

”... you have to remind yourself it IS only a story, isn’t it?”

JYDSKEVESTKYSTEN

★★★★ EKSTRA BLADET

♥♥♥♥ POLITIKEN

★★★★ JYLLANDS-POSTEN

★★★★ ALT FOR DAMERNE

TESTIMONIALS ”I am so jealous of people who haven’t read Jens Henrik Jensen’s OXEN-trilogy yet. Because they still have the chance to be fully blown away when they do. Seriously, I am telling all my editor friends they have to buy this trilogy. It is THAT good.”

SUSAN SANDÉRUS ACQUIREREND REDACTEUR FICTIE / COMMISSIONING EDITOR FICTION A.W BRUNA

★★★ EKSTRA

★★★ BLADET

★★★★★

★★★★★

KRIMIFAN.DK

BOGNØRDEN

♥♥♥♥♥ KRIMIFAN.DK

★★★★

“The second volume of Jens Henrik Jensen’s trilogy on Danehof is a blazing manhunt, where conspiracies and veteran’s politics come together.”

JYLLANDS-POSTEN

★★★★

“It is a pleasure reading Jens Henrik Jensen’s novels.”

JYDSKEVESTKYSTEN

★★★★

“Exquisite excitement; well-wri en and thoroughly researched.”

NORDJYSKE STIFTSTIDENDE

“… an exceptionally polished crime novel, which raises the bar for Scandinavian noir another notch. Jensen is the new standard.”

THRILLZONE.NL HOLLAND

OUTSTANDING CRIME NOVEL

BY THE DANISH FORSYTH Jens Henrik Jensen has outdone himself with this third book in the series about highly decorated elite soldier Niels Oxen.

Frozen Flames crackles with tension, fizzes with action, and teems with colourful characters – all told in a way that can only be described as brilliant.

And that’s how it is with Jens Henrik Jensen’s new novel Frozen Flames. No ma er how many books you read, whether you like crime or not – it makes no difference.

A good book is like great art: it can be tough to define why it’s so good. But when you stumble across it, you’re le in no doubt. Quality has a life of its own. It works because of the way it affects us.

Either way, this is an outstanding novel.

The glorious aroma of quality is unmistakeable.”

JYSK FYNSKE MEDIER

A NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

THE

Y G O L I R T N E OX

FOR MORE INFORMATION Sofie Voller Head of Foreign Rights sofie.voller@jppol.dk Direct phone: +45 3347 0793 Mobile: +45 5131 1811

Rudi Urban Rasmussen Literary Agent rudi.u.rasmussen@jppol.dk Direct phone: +45 33470782 Mobile: +45 20893188

Politiken Literary Agency JP/Politikens Hus A/S Raadhuspladsen 37 DK1785 Copenhagen V Phone: +45 33470707

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