Piemme acquires The Guardian Angel at auction

A few days after the Frankfurt Book Fair we’re glad to announce the first deal for the top thriller of the season: The Guardian Angel. Piemme, the prominent Italian thriller publisher, acquired the rights for the novel in auction, for a fall 2018 publication as a lead title.

Einar Hansen’s novel combines the genres of true crime and psychological thriller: the book has been written alongside an eponymous feature film by Arto Halonen, a Finnish-Danish-Croatian co-production, which premiers internationally in 2018, starring Pilou Asbaek (Game of Thrones), Josh Lucas (A Beautiful Mind) and Rade Serbedzija (Downton Abbey).

“The Guardian Angel. I was mesmerized by the sparse and, yes, hypnotic language, which painted with very few strokes such vivid feelings and characters. Everyone, Anders and Marie in particular, as well as the very special “villains”, come alive in the strongest way, and the icy and still atmosphere of this post-war Denmark where the echoes of the past are still so powerful, is amazingly well done”, said fiction editor Giulia De Biase of Piemme.

The Guardian Angel, which is based on true events, is about a bizarre double murder that shook Copenhagen in the 1950s. Palle Hardrup, a former Nazi collaborator recently released from prison, walks into a bank, demands money and shoots two employees point blank. The police catch the man in no time, but according to the witnesses, he acted in a trance-like state. Inspector Anders Olsen’s suspicions are aroused: what if the man was operating under hypnosis – and what if the real killer is still at large?

Get in touch with us for the English manuscript and other information on The Guardian Angel.