Three Swedish engineers are murdered in three different countries. The method is identical. The connection between the victims is nowhere to be found.

Four months into his new role as a European police coordinator, George Bracke is handed his first major international investigation. One victim dies in Belgium, another in Portugal, a third in Wales. All three have been poisoned with arsenic, yet they appear to have had nothing to do with one another.

As Bracke brings together investigators from several countries, the trail begins to lead backwards — all the way to the Second World War.

A forgotten file reveals that the fathers of the three murdered men once worked at Vemork in occupied Norway, where heavy water played a crucial role in German nuclear research. What happened there decades ago was never meant to resurface. But someone is determined to make sure that the past remains buried.

From Ghent to Scandinavia, Britain and beyond, Bracke finds himself caught in a case where science, wartime secrets, ambition and murder become dangerously intertwined. And the deeper the investigation reaches into the past, the clearer it becomes that the killings may be about far more than revenge.

Heavy Water is the fifth George Bracke thriller and can be read as a standalone novel. It follows Botero, Tango Mortale, Cold Fire and Kismet. George Bracke combines stubborn old-fashioned detective work with an instinctive distrust of easy answers — and enough dry humour to survive the bureaucracy of international policing.

About the author

Stefaan Van Laere, born in 1963, is a Belgian author, journalist and publisher. Active as a journalist and writer since 1988, he has contributed to numerous magazines, newspapers and online publications in Belgium and abroad. He is associated with the Belgian platform Boomager and runs Partizaan Publishers. His books have appeared in Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Italian.