Jussi Adler-Olsen

Sin ninguna duda este libro, es por mucho mejor que el primero y eso, es mucho decir, porque el primero “La mujer que arañaba las paredes”, es sin duda un muy buen libro.

Los personajes están bien definidos psicológicamente, la manera en que nos muestra la sociopatía y psicopatía de un grupo de muchachos que se unen para apoyarse unos a otros en actos delictivos, es bastante perturbador, se nos ilustra perfectamente el éxtasis de los culpables a la hora de hacer daño y al mismo show more tiempo a cara del publico ser hombres muy respetables, esto muestra una enorme capacidad de Adler-Olsen para interiorizarse en sus personajes creados, es duro sin llegar ser escabroso.

Una historia muy bien manejada en todos los sentidos, tiene la ligereza de la narración, pero al mismo tiempo la profundidad de la historia, negra, fuerte y dura, por lo que la hace a mi parecer una historia redonda.

El Departamento Q, creado para investigar casos no resueltos, se encuentra con uno que aparentemente es un caso resuelto, pero que de alguna manera aparece en el escritorio de Carl, le van dejando pistas de tal forma que se da cuenta de que en realidad no es un caso cerrado como aparenta y que detrás de unos asesinatos cometidos 20 años atrás se encuentran un grupo de personas influyentes y respetadas.

Una persecución a una vagabunda, varios “accidentes”, amenazas veladas y más encontraremos en esta nueva entrega de la serie Departamento Q.

Por cierto que seguimos con la incógnita de quién es en realidad Assad y el caso en el que Mørck pierde a sus dos compañeros al inicio de la serie sigue siendo relevante pero incierto, una buena manera de mantenernos a la expectativa de una manera bastante sutil.

También me gusta mucho la mancuerna de Mørck y Assad, entiendo que el autor no pretenda ser gracioso, pero no puedo dejar de sonreír con algunas de las escenas entre ellos dos.
Muy recomendable esta segundo libro de Jussi Adler-Olden, quien por supuesto se ha consagrado con esta serie como uno de los escritores más leídos de novela negra en el mundo. show less

I've read MERCY (aka THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES) by Jussi Adler-Olsen twice now and finally I think I've got it the review straight in my head.

Why twice? The first time I read this book was right in the middle of a series of releases based around the woman locked in the basement scenario, and frankly, I was pissed off. Even though I really felt that this gross generalisation wasn't fair in the case of MERCY, this scenario had annoyed me so badly, objectiveness had become a real problem. So show more why reread and why now? Well a movie came out, and there were a lot more books in the Department Q series that I've been keen to try so a little reconsideration was required.

Based around the concept of cold cases, Carl Mørck is back with the Copenhagen Police Department, after six months sick leave recovering from being shot on duty. His colleague wasn't so lucky, still in hospital, paralysed and suffering.

Mørck has always been a difficult person to get on with and because of that the opportunity is taken to sideline him into “Department Q” the cold case unit. In the basement, where hopefully the lack of resources, and one suspects a general lack of oxygen / visibility get through to Mørck that he's not the most popular person. Which seems to be working on one level as he grudgingly shows up and spends most of his time solving Sudoko puzzles and playing games with the powers that be. Unfortunately one game – his demand for an assistant means he's lumbered with Hafez el-Assad, man who very much wants to be an investigator and doesn't agree that Department Q is the pits. When he finds something in the file on the disappearance of politician Merete Lynggaard, Mørck finds himself actually investigating something.

Alternating the viewpoints between the investigation and Lynnggaard in captivity brings an immediacy to the search. Whilst investigators have no idea if she is alive or dead, the reader knows she is, knows her state of mind, and knows her abductors are nearby.

With a clearer viewpoint of this concept there are obvious differences here – Lynggaard isn't being held as a sex slave or as a plaything of a nutter, but the reason she is being held isn't clear. And the cruelty and dispassionate behaviour of her abductors is staggering, uncomfortably so. As is the distress and the worry that everyone has for the brother she's left out in the real world. Badly equipped to handle it, he has an acquired brain injury as a result of the car accident that killed their parents when they were children. His suffering is as palpable as hers.

Aside from the difference that's now obvious – that this isn't an opportunistic tale of a woman in a basement after all, and add in the great characters of the investigators and this is really a strong opening book. The grumpiness of Mørck and the intelligence and compassion of Assad make them a great team. Having said that, grumpiness isn't the defining quality of Mørck when you're paying attention – there's a lot more to this story than greets the initial eye.

I have no explanation at all as to why I didn't see that the first time around, but I'm profoundly relieved that I had the sense to leave MERCY in the pile – knowing there was something wrong with my initial reaction but not able to articulate it.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-mercy-jussi-adler-olsen show less

A cold case file mysteriously appears on Carl Mørck's desk and when nobody wants to admit to leaving it there, Carl and shifty Assad gets to go hunting for the perpetrators of a series of assaults and murders. After a somewhat unlikely plotline in the first book in this series, I shouldn't have been surprised that the plotline of this one too beggars belief a little. Adler-Olsen seems to pick only psychologically unstable characters for his bad guys, and, although many writers who use this show more device use it as a reason for the denouement to be a surprise, Adler-Olsen escapes the same trap because the resolution to the mystery isn't that the perps are disturbed - that's made clear from page one - so the actual storyline is how Department Q can catch the baddies.

As in the previous installment, it is our main characters Mørck and Assad that are the stars - their completely different personalities and temperaments give rise to quite a few hilarious moments and there's just no way not to be charmed by them. My only caveat is the new assistant, Rose, but mainly because I can't really get a feel for her role in the group yet, which will hopefully be made clear in future installments. Beware for a substantial amount of torture in this one, and if you prefer to avoid gruesome mysteries, I'd suggest staying away from this one. show less

Okay, I will admit right at the start that I have a hard time with stories that include graphic descriptions of physical torture committed by twisted creatures of evil. I can no longer watch an entire episode of Criminal Minds even though I have enjoyed some of the shows in the past. Perhaps as I age I become too aware that sick minds do exist and that they have control over bodies that do unspeakably evil things to others. It is not all fiction. Sadly.

That said, The Keeper of Lost Causes show more hooked me at the first page. Heck, the first sentence of the Prologue did it:

"She scratched her fingertips on the smooth walls until they bled, and pounded her fists on the thick panes until she could no longer feel her hands."

“She” is Merete Lynggaard, a member of the Danish legislature known as the Folketing and the novel alternates between her story and that of the detective who works to solve the mystery of her disappearance five years earlier.

I tend to judge a book by how many times I think about it when I am not actually reading it. Can I identify with the characters and their concerns pop into my mind when I am folding the laundry or driving the car? And when I read the last page do I immediately begin the search for a sequel? Lacking a sequel, do I immediately begin re-reading the book?

I always preferred Jane Marple to Hercule Poirot because i could more easily relate to her. Hercule always seemed too weird and one dimensional for my taste. Aside from his mustache the only thing I knew for sure about him was that his ego was truly obese. John Rebus I like, but often found myself wanting to give him a good swift kick in the butt and insist that he develop a little self awareness. Fortunately, he operated in Edinburgh and I can put up with a lot to imagine myself back there again. I love Charlotte Pitt and her husband Thomas, unlike Kurt Manning, whom I try to tolerate.

Carl Morck is the type of detective I enjoy. A complicated man, he is recovering from a shooting incident that killed one of his team and paralyzed another but left him with only a bullet graze. And the sinking guilt that he survived and never drew his weapon. Police work has lost its appeal for him and he is simply marking time.

Difficult to work with before the shooting, returning from sick leave he finds himself exiled to a basement office and assigned cold cases under a new program dictated by the Danish Folketing. He found the reassignment less than upsetting:

"He was still going to do exactly what he wanted to. Which was, as much as possible, absolutely nothing."

But the curiosity and skill that made him such an outstanding detective in the past that his “eternally skeptical eyes and caustic remarks” were overlooked by his superiors surfaces in an old case that his assistant subtly urges on him.

Oh yes, in addition to a freshly painted basement office, Hafez el-Assad is assigned as his assistant. Intriguing in his own right, Assad is hired to make coffee, clean the basement and drive Morck in his assigned departmental Peugeot 607. He brings a bit of his native Syria into the basement with his fragrant spices, teas, music “reminiscent of the bazaar in Sousse,” and his prayer rug. The relationship between the two men grows throughout the story and provides an occasional smile.

Divorced, but still in contact with his ex-wife, Carl shares his home with his teenage stepson who lives upstairs and favors heavy metal music at full volume, and a lodger who lives in the basement and enjoys operatic arias which also need a high volume.

Just as the two competing musical styles create a certain level of tension in the Morck household, the two competing tales told in alternating chapters create a tension in the reader. We are introduced to Merete in 2002 at the very beginning of the book when she is locked in a room from which she appears unable to escape. As we follow her struggles, we learn, through flashbacks, of the accident that took her parents life and left her to raise her brother who was severely injured and suffered brain damage.

The novel alternates between Merete and Carl stories in a thoroughly satisfying manner. The pacing is taut enough to keep the reader turning the pages and the plot complex enough to engage the reader’s mind. The main characters are fully realized and easy to identify with although the lesser characters are not as fully drawn. But then, this is a detective novel, and they don’t really need to be. The joy is in the mystery and the steps to its solution.

This is part of the wave of Scandanavian mysteries that has been hitting our shores since Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy made such a big hit here in the States. Although some readers have long been familiar with the genre, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo created a new audience with an appetite for Nordic Noir.

"Jussi Adler-Olsen is Denmark's premier crime writer. His books routinely top the bestseller lists in northern Europe, and he's won just about every Nordic crime-writing award, including the prestigious Glass Key Award-also won by Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and Jo Nesbo. Now, Dutton is thrilled to introduce him to America." - Amazon. The Kindle edition is translated by Lisa Hartford.

Unfortunately, it is the only work of Adler-Olsen that has yet been translated into English. And this, the first of four novels in the Q series, was published in August of 2011 four years after its Danish publication. So I guess it will be a while before the rest of them are available unless one can read Danish.

It will be a very long year. show less