Early in the morning in Copenhagen a petrol tanker, hijacked by a young girl, is set on fire, melting the high-voltage cables carrying electricity, blacking out Copenhagen and causing total chaos on the roads.The resultant confusion is used by a motorcycle gang who carry out seven bank robberies and escape with the money. The power failure also means that a passenger plane from the Soviet fails to make a stopover at Copenhagen Airport and flies directly to Heathrow, arriving an hour ahead of schedule… Meanwhile, on Heathrow conditions are also chaotic. A threat to bomb Terminal 2 makes it necessary for the police to X-ray passengers luggage. This could be disastrous for one of the Russians on the place, a diamond courier from the Soviet Almaz concern…In Denmark, the police struggle to clear up the bank robberies without knowing that they are simply a part of the world s biggest diamond theft masterminded by the defectors… A Brilliant Coup indeed!Søren Jakobsen is an award-winning Danish journalist and author. Together with his colleague Jakob Andersen, Søren Jakobsen won the Cavling Prize in 1977 for a series of articles about the Defense Intelligence Service s illegal use of espionage. In 1981 he received the Poe Prize for his crime novel A Brilliant Coup . In addition to his critically acclaimed detective stories, Søren Jakobsen has published the documentary books Danish Dynasties (2007) and The LEGO Legacy (2008).
