Red Flag. A Nordic crime thriller about revenge, and the revenge on revenge.
Logline
Three convicted killers break out of an old Oslo prison. One of them arranged the escape. Not to get away, but to take revenge.
01 · Bredstad fengsel
An old prison on the edge of Oslo. Towers, deep cellar tunnels, cracks in the walls. Jonny finds a way from the kitchen pantry into the cellars, and during renovation work three prisoners slip out.
They hide underground until the search moves on
02 · Telemark
A car takes them deep into the Telemark forest. September, and deer season has begun. Kai Moen says the cabin belongs to a friend.
Under his duvet: a clipping about two murdered girls
03 · Vegårshei
Thirteen hours on foot through bog, streams and wolf country to a hut in the birch woods. In the shed, a pram and a doll that looks like a real baby. Behind the hut, a freshly dug pit.
"For the sewage," says Kai
04 · Tvedestrand
A small island off the white wooden town, where a mother and her daughter are alone for the autumn holiday. Where it all began, seven summers ago.
Everyone in this story is hunting someone
The line-up
All three escapees are killers. The people waiting for them are not safe either.
Dreams of a quiet life abroad and a café job.
Charming, with contacts outside. Says he was wrongly convicted.
Kitchen hand. Has killed two women.
Prison psychiatrist. Has treated all three.
Mother. Alone on the island for the holiday.
Her daughter.
Spoiler zone
The story turns three times. Open the file only if you want the ending.
Kai Moen is Ståle Sundquist, a psychiatrist married to Thyra, and the father of a girl murdered on the island seven years ago. In a week he starts at the prison as Nina Heide's stand-in. He staged the escape to kill his daughter's killer. He is the “hero” of the story: he saves Eva and ends Thyra's fear.
The killer from the prologue is Taran. She killed her own mother and two little girls, driven by severe mental illness. Free, she sets out for the island to take his other daughter.
Nina Heide was once Astrid Hellmann, Thyra's childhood friend. Her own revenge on Thyra's family has been running for thirteen years.
The psychiatrist's alibi is a research paper on revenge: the planned, cold kind against the impulsive, hot kind. The novel stages both, then reveals a third, colder still.
Praise
“A frightening and very readable psychological thriller.”Cathrine Krøger, Dagbladet · on Rødt Flagg
A brilliant, fully realised thriller.
Unni has taught me that you can be good and still get better.
Her characters live, love and kill with fantastic precision and finesse.
The author
One of Norway's best-selling crime writers for more than thirty years, published across Europe. Her Cato Isaksen novels were adapted for NRK television and shown throughout Europe. Rødt Flagg opens a new chapter, and she wants her strongest books to be the ones still to come.
Rights
To: crimewitch@me.com Subject: Rødt Flagg · manuscript request Dear Unni, I would like to read Rødt Flagg with a view to [film / TV / representation]. Name: Company: Role: