Ever felt like you’re the last one to the party? That’s currently the way I feel since I’ve been reading these Scandinavian crime thrillers. I kinda feel like these have been kept secret from me for years and I’m just now realizing how much in love I am with the whole crime thriller genre.
I stopped reading American crime dramas and thrillers a long time ago. I read the first five Scarpetta books by Patricia Cornwell and I went through all of Dan Brown’s early books after I finished The DaVinci Code. But I haven’t had any inclination to read any of Cornwell’s or Brown’s newest ones. I’ve tried to pick up The Lost Symbol and I keep crashing on the writing. The information may be interesting but geez, Brown’s writing leaves a lot to be desired. It feels like I’m reading The DaVinci Code again, but only in a different part of the world (Washington, D.C.) and with somewhat different characters.
In the last few months, I’ve stumbled across some really good crime thrillers but they’re all written overseas. But every single author has become an author that I want to follow and read more work by. It’s been so long since I’ve been caught by a book and held without my will until I read every single word, but that’s what these books are doing to me.
The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen is one of those books.
I’ve had it in my “to-read” pile for months — maybe even years — but I just sat down recently to read it. And wow, I’m glad
I did.
With a lot of thrillers, you tend to feel as though you’re on a roller coaster. The tension ratchets up and then is released and continues to do so throughout the book, until that very last climax. Yeah, they’re typically plot-driven but to me, the characters start to feel like cookie-cutter cut outs.
Carl Morck is a broken police detective from Jutland. He’s just healed physically from an altercation that leaves one of his partners dead and the other paralyzed, an altercation he feels deeply responsible for the outcome. The powers that be in the government have offered the police department five million kronors a year to start a new department, one that focuses on solving cold cases before the cases are put away for good. It’s called Department Q. In an attempt to marginalize Carl, the police superintendent places him in charge of the newly created Department Q. With some nudging from his assistant/secretary/janitor/handyman, he reluctantly chooses a case and starts to work.
Carl’s a very good detective with excellent instincts, but the incident with his partners has completely knocked him off his game. He doesn’t want to work anymore, willing to sit in his office in the basement and do nothing all day (although while trying to appear as though he’s always busy), perhaps as a way of punishing himself. His assistant, Assad, on the other hand, is eager to work and wants to help in any and every way possible. It’s Assad’s eagerness to get started and to help solve a crime that gets Carl back into the swing of things.
The case? The disappearance of a rising political star, Merete Lynggaard. We see her in the beginning chapter, trapped in a dark room with no way out, then the narrative goes back and forth from 2007 to 2002 and we learn about her life leading up to her disappearance. It’s an interesting way of revealing information and I found no problems in following it as I read.
At the end of the book, I found myself wondering what was going to happen to Carl. Yes, he completed one character arc, but he still remained broken. There’s more to come in future books — he’s not done yet, either by my reading of this first book or by my knowledge of the fact that there are indeed more books out there.
Series are the new big thing in books. Well, maybe not new, but definitely big. If a reader reads one of the books and likes it, he’ll hunt out more of them. The thing is this book really did take Carl from a broken detective to… well, something else, but it wasn’t what you’d call a major change. At the end of the book, you know Carl is going to continue his work in Department Q, albeit less reluctantly. And while it’s a subtle change, it’s a far cry from where he was at the beginning of the book.
He feels as though he’s on his feet again, albeit unsteady, but at least he’s standing.
I’m definitely going to look up the other books in the series and read them.
Do you like Scandinavian crime fiction? Is there a book or two that you want to recommend? Feel free to leave your thoughts below, but please, no spoilers 