The Scorpion Brooch

The year is 1909, and Oskar Prods Brattenschlag has recently been employed as assistant at the Norwegian Embassy in London. On his way to buy a birthday present for his wife Ada, he is accosted by a man he meets by chance who, unprompted, tells him about an antique shop close by with a scorpion brooch in the window. Brattenschlag ought to rush and buy it, he is told, lest the "evilest man in the world" beats him to it. Brattenschlag thinks the ornament might suit Ada, who was born under Scorpio’s sign. As he is about to buy the brooch and a rare pack of tarot cards, a man enters the premises and demands to buy the cards. He turns out to be the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. This will be the prelude to a series of mysterious events, disappearances and unexplained deaths that Brattenschlag is inadvertently reeled into.As in his previous novels, H. K. Fauskanger weaves historical figures and actual events into an intense crime plot, one where Brattenschlag and his partner Professor Lagergren are put to the toughest of tests.