It's a good premise for a television drama serial: that Belgium is in the grip of a secret society, a hybrid of the fascists and the Freemasons, crossing all walks of life. It's an especially powerful idea in Belgium because that country has relatively week political parties and perpetual coalition; which makes the idea that real power lies elsewhere especially effective. Then you have a standard thriller set up, with the honest cop, various people in the government trading off their own interests and instincts in different ways, the society's members (and they have their own internal power struggles), and finally a mysterious gang of bank robbers with a hidden agenda of their own. Taken as a whole, it's preposterous, as all such dramas are, but it's also fast-paced, well-acted and cleverly plotted. Three quibbles: why would a group of senior public figures keep evidence incriminating themselves in a bank, instead of just destroying it? Isn't money the true power in our society anyway? And while the Salamander organisation seems to be reasonably good at getting people killed, we don't see any evidence of it actually achieving anything else; for a supposed group of all-powerful people, they seem to spend the entire story on the defensive. But it's still gripping stuff, and thankfully avoids the "psychopathic genius" nonsense that spoils a lot of similar work.
