A body on the pavement in front of an apartment building in Vič. A clandestine meeting in a Portorož hotel bar, the corridors of the Alien Centre in Postojna, drama in a discotheque on a hill in Ljubljana… It is a novel in Danish style, but the Slovenian reader immediately recognizes the locations. Most likely the residents of New York have the same feeling - watching the streets of their city in half of the movies?
Henrik Brun, the Danish journalist turned writer with already four published novels, worked as foreign correspondent for almost a decade. He also reported from war zones in the former Yugoslavia, and later used his experiences in his first work of fiction, the thriller Den danske lokkedue (The Danish Decoy). The novel was recently published in Slovenian by the Sanje publishing house, Danska zanka translated by Darko Čuden.
He explained he had two reasons for choosing Ljubljana as the setting for his novel: the city was of just the right size and its peaceful atmosphere was suitable for his purpose. When such things happen in peaceful communities, those involved try to conceal it. The story such as he wrote in The Danish Decoy could happen only on the outskirts - unknowingly he touched the hottest topic of the moment, the topic of human trafficking in EU.
To make the novel even more interesting, he included fragments of history from the last quarter of the century: an owner of a successful chain store with political ambitions (any similarities with real persons are only accidental, he claims), a Danish handball star playing for a Ljubljana team, intrusive Sova agents, corrupt policemen, and of course a "Bond girl", a promising Slovenian journalist Ines. She helps the Danish lead character with hope of getting an exclusive for her newspaper. The plot thickens when the Danish journalist Ketil Brandt, on his way to a wedding in Sarajevo, learns that his Danish friend from the war times in the Balkans committed suicide in Ljubljana. But, did he really jump from a balcony?
In the meantime the novel got three more sequels, and a film adaptation is being negotiated. Henrik Brun visited "his favourite city in the world" at the occasion of the release of The Danish Decoy in Slovenian. He said he had waited for it quite anxiously.