Review: THE SHADOW MURDERS, Jussi Adler-Olsen

• 
  this large print edition published 2022 by Penguin Random House
  
• made available by my local library
  
• translated by William Frost
• Department Q #9
• 603 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

In the penultimate thriller in the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series, Copenhagen's cold cases division must hunt for a nefarious serial killer who has slipped under the radar for decades.

On her 60th birthday, a woman commits suicide. When the case lands on Detective Carl Morck's desk, he can't imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division. It's a tragedy to be sure, but the cause of death seems to be clear. But his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is not in fact a suicide, but a murder related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.

At Marcus' behest, Carl and the Department Q gang-Rose, Assad, and Gordon-reluctantly begin to investigate. However, they quickly discover that Marcus is on to something: Every two years for the past three decades, there have been unusual, impeccably timed deaths with connections between them that cannot be ignored. As they dig deeper, it transpires that these "accidents" are in fact murders by a very cunning and violent serial killer.

Faced with their toughest case yet, made only more difficult with COVID-19 restrictions and the challenges of their own personal lives, the Department Q team must race to find the culprit before the next murder is committed, as it is becoming increasingly clear that the killer is far from finished. 

My Take

For much of this complex novel I struggled to see where it was going. At first it seemed to be a series of unconnected incidents: the pattern emerged about half way through. 

As always the very existence of Department Q is under scrutiny and threat, and Carl Morck is being threatened himself. There are those in the Police department who are determined to bring Morck down. 

The story is set in 2020, Covid resrictions are in place, and investigations and interviews are difficult. 

The reader is able to follow both sides of the investigation, both the Department Q side, and the continuing case which is destined to result in a murder on Boxing Day. 

The plot is clever and very Danish noir.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

4.8, KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES
4.5, REDEMPTION
4.5, BURIED
4.8, THE HANGING GIRL- #6

Review: THE HANGING GIRL, Jussi Adler-Olssen

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 3470 KB
• Print Length: 514 pages
• Publisher: Quercus (September 3, 2015)
• Translated  from Danish into English  by William Frost 2015
• Publication Date: September 3, 2015
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00YS5M060
• Department Q #6 

Synopsis (Amazon)

In the middle of a hard-won morning nap in the basement of police headquarters, Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, receives a call from a colleague working on the Danish island of Bornholm. Carl is dismissive at first, but then he receives some shocking news.

Carl then has no choice but to lead Department Q into the tragic cold case of a vivacious seventeen-year-old girl who vanished from school, only to be found dead hanging high up in a tree. The investigation will take them from the remote island of Bornholm to a hidden cult, where Carl and his assistants must stop a string of new murders by a skilled manipulator who refuses to let anything-or anyone-get in the way.

My Take

A friend told me that this was his best read for 2015, and while it won't be my top read, it will certainly make it into my top 10 for the year. It took me quite a long time to read it, well over 10 days, which is long for me. I'm sure whether I had been hit by jet lag after my recent travels, or whether it was some how due to the translation and structure of the novel.

As always, someone will ask, "should I read the Carl Morck series in order"? This is #6 in the series, and I have only read three others. So there in part is your answer I guess. But I've certainly benefitted from reading earlier titles. They have contributed to my understanding of the composition of Department Q and of the relationships between its members. I also have some understanding of what happened to Morck's friend and colleague Hardy.

Carl Morck receives a phone call from a former colleague whose career has been blighted by his obsession with a murder that took place over three decades earlier. When Morck refuses to help by taking a look at the case, his former colleague commits suicide at his own retirement party, thus forcing Morck to at least visit Bornholm to look at the cause of the suicide. He takes Assad and Rose with him and between they decide that they need to look at the case that had so obsessed Christian Habersaat. In the long run, nothing is what it seems. The threads lead everywhere and finding continuous strings is hard.

When Assad and Carl get close to identifying the person they think was the original murderer, their own lives are put into danger. And meanwhile the author is layering more and more information onto our plates, for us to sift and decide what to discard. This is certainly one of those novels where the reader gets a strong intimation of what is required of the detective.

One of the things that struck me about this novel is a level of humour created by Assad's literal interpretation of idiomatic language. It wasn't an element that had struck me so much in earlier novels. And Morck begins to understand that he doesn't know everything to know about Assad.

My rating : 4.8


I've also reviewed
4.8, KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES
4.5, REDEMPTION
4.5, BURIED

Review: BURIED: Department Q Book 5, Jussi Adler-Olsen

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 1252 KB
• Print Length: 496 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (February 26, 2015)
• Publication Date: February 26, 2015
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00OPJV3QW
• translated by Martin Aitken
• also published as THE MARCO EFFECT

Synopis (Amazon)

Over three years ago, a civil servant vanished after returning from a work trip to Africa. Missing, presumed dead, the man's family still want answers.
It is one of the many unsolved crimes facing Department Q, Denmark's specialist cold case unit headed up by Detective Carl Morck. But what Carl doesn't know is that the key to the investigation can be found right here in Copenhagen...
Fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson is tough, smart and very suspicious of police. Sleeping rough and hiding in the shadows is his way of life. But what does he know worth killing for - and will the police find him before whoever he is running from?

My Take:

This novel raises a number of interesting modern issues including corruption and fraud among agencies delivering international aid to third world countries; organised crime in cities like Copenhagen targetting tourists; and the relationship in police departments between those who deal with current and cold cases.

In BURIED current cases and unsolved crimes overlap, and there are those who think Department Q is over-resourced and needs watching.  The staff of Department Q are certainly odd, at times presenting an impression of dysfunctionality, but their talents are varied and they each have their own areas of expertise and complement each other well. Carl Morck tries desperately to keep them under control.


My Rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed
4.8, KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES
4.5, REDEMPTION

Review: REDEMPTION, Jussi Adler-Olsen

• REDEMPTION is UK market title
• apa A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH (US Market) or MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE (Danish title)
• #3 in the Carl Morck series
• first published 2009
• translated from Danish into English by Martin Aitken
• published by Penguin Books 2013
• ISBN 978-0-141-39999-7
• 632 pages
• source: my local library
• Author website: www.jussiadlerolsen.com

Synopsis (author website)

In a far corner of Scotland, at the police station in Wick, a bottle was forgotten in a windowsill for a long, long time. Inside the bottle was a barely readable note; the only two things that were certain were that the first word was the Danish word for HELP and that it was written in blood.

When the horrifying message in the bottle finally makes its way to the desk of Carl Mørck at Department Q - the Danish department for "cases of special focus" - terrible events begin to unfold. Carl Mørck and his assistant Assad find themselves drawn into a scary case of cults and disappearing siblings, whose parents have never reported them missing. They suddenly realise that time is running short.

From the author
Jussi, can you give us a hint about what the main themes of Message in a Bottle are - what are we to expect?

Well, what to expect? Hopefully, that Carl Mørck and Assad will keep moving in their own strange ways, while a horrible case is turned upside down. They have a lot on their plate in Message in a Bottle. Not least when a new personage, who was definitely not invited, shows up in the basement. At the same time, terrible things happen in Denmark, which... well as you may have guessed by now, I am not going to say anything at all ... Message in a Bottle is a case for Department Q. And as you may well know, they keep it to themselves.

My Take

Department Q are in the middle of researching arson cases, and looking for connections with more recent examples of arson, when the hand written message in the bottle turns up. Transcribing the message is just the sort of thing that Department Q, and in particular Morck's oddball assistant Rose, and her sister Yrsa, are good at. The more letters that Rose manages to decipher from the note, the more Morck recognises that this is a piteous plea for help.

To say that this is a long and rather involved plot is probably an understatement. By the time I'd got about half way through though the length had ceased to matter and I was caught up in the mounting suspense of whether Department Q could locate another more recent pair of victims in time.

I missed reading #2 in the series, which meant that I was in the dark about how some circumstances in REDEMPTION had occurred. So my recommendation is that you tackle the books in order (see below), although I think I managed to piece things together pretty well.

For some readers there will be too many coincidences (see the review on Reactions to Reading.) and certainly the main plot is rather fantastical, but every now and then it hits the level of the possible, and that is what kept me reading.

My rating: 4.5

I have also reviewed
4.8, KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES 

The series (Fantastic Fiction)
Department Q
1. Mercy (2011)
     aka The Keeper of Lost Causes
2. Disgrace (2012)
     aka The Absent One
3. Redemption (2013)
     aka A Conspiracy of Faith
4. The Purity of Vengeance (2013)
     aka Guilt
5. The Marco Effect (2014)

Wikipedia article about the author.

Review: THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES, Jussi Adler-Olsen

Translated by Tiina Nunnally
Published Penguin Group (USA Aug 2011)
My copy: an Advance Uncorrected Proof from NetGalley

Marketing copy provided by the publisher
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.

The Keeper of Lost Causes, the first installment of Adler-Olsen's Department Q series, features the deeply flawed chief detective Carl MØrck, who used to be a good homicide detective-one of Copenhagen's best. Then a bullet almost took his life. Two of his colleagues weren't so lucky, and Carl, who didn't draw his weapon, blames himself.

So a promotion is the last thing Carl expects.

But it all becomes clear when he sees his new office in the basement. Carl's been selected to run Department Q, a new special investigations division that turns out to be a department of one. With a stack of Copenhagen's coldest cases to keep him company, Carl's been put out to pasture. So he's as surprised as anyone when a case actually captures his interest. A missing politician vanished without a trace five years earlier. The world assumes she's dead. His colleagues snicker about the time he's wasting. But Carl may have the last laugh, and redeem himself in the process.

My take

By 2007 Carl Morck had been in the Danish police force for 25 years. He was once an experienced criminal investigator who lived and breathed for his work. He used to be an elegant man whom people noticed. But all that changed the day he and his team were sent to a murder investigation where hidden snipers killed one them, paralysed a second, and took away Morck's fire.

Six months on, Morck is back at work but a bit of an embarrassment that his superiors don't how to handle. The answer comes in the shape of a new section, Department Q, that Morck will head, that will deal only with unsolved crimes designated as cases "deserving special scrutiny."

The first case Morck decides to deal with is a high profile one of popular politician Merete Lynggaard who vanished from a ferry from Germany docking in Copenhagen Harbour in 2002. Successfully solving this case will be a big feather in the cap for Department Q.

Department Q consists of Carl Morck and his assistant, a political refugee from Syria, a civilian called Hafez el-Assad. Assad is primarily meant to do clerical and cleaning duties but as Morck increasingly involves him in the investigation, it becomes obvious that Assad has experience and talents no-one knows about. They make an unlikely but strangely complementary detective duo.

Their investigation into Merete Lynggaard's disappearance reveals elementary pathways that the original team missed and sloppy methodology. As they begin to make progress, the investigation into the shooting of Morck's team six months before ramps up, and Morck himself has panic attacks over what it will reveal.

Book website

This was a great read. My rating 4.8

I certainly hope to read a sequel.

I am counting THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES in e-book challenge, Nordic Challenge 2011, translated, and new-to-me authors.