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: ANNA MARKLIN'S FAMILY CHRONICLES, Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

• Published: Dec. 17, 2012
• Words: 76,073 (approximate)
• Language: British English
• ISBN: 9781301698127
• Format: Kindle (Smashwords or Amazon)
• Source: Review copy provided by the author

Synopsis (Smashwords)

A psychological mystery, set in Scandinavia.

This is the story of a young Danish woman, whose life is in a rut. Anna Storm is unemployed, her father is seriously ill, and her best friend and neighbour receives mysterious threats. Anna is a very ordinary antihero, so even when her friend dies unexpectedly, she keeps burying her head in the sand.

Then she finds her Swedish grandmother's old notebooks, however. Anna is spellbound by the beautiful drawings and the sweet story of her grandmother's everyday life. Finally, she has found a worthy project to engage in. As she reads her grandmother's words, it dawns on her that the books are not suitable for children at all, but that the sinister story which is hidden between the lines may give Anna a much needed push. Anna wakes up - but is it too late? 

My Take

Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen cleverly juggles several plot lines in her first "serious" crime fiction novel.
The novel begins with a Prologue which is in fact some text pulled from the middle of the novel. I must confess that at first this text confused me just a little. You can in fact read this Prologue online here and on Amazon.

Chapter One then jumps back in time about 2 months. 
The first of the novel's threads is about Anna Storm's neighbour Karin who appears to go missing on a regular basis. Anna is not unduly alarmed at first because she and Karin have been good friends for so long. But she becomes concerned when Karin is gone for a week.

The second thread is Anna's relationship with her parents. Her father has refused to give her much detail about his side of the family until now. But now he is seriously ill and seems to understand Anna's need to know her family history. Anna is unemployed and generally has a bit of time on her hands and so goes off to Sweden to find the village her father's family came from.  Anna learns that there is quite a bit of sinister mystery attached to her father's family history.

The third thread is a journal written at the beginning of the twentieth century by Anna Marklin, Anna Storm's father's Farmor. Excerpts from the journal begin to appear in the novel even before Anna Storm becomes aware that it exists.

The fourth thread is that of Anna's marriage to Lars. 

Although Jakobsen is a Danish author, this novel is written in English with a few Danish words thrown in for good measure. Hymns and poetry are translated for the reader by the author and a glossary is provided of some Danish terms at the beginning of the novel.

There are at least two mysteries to be solved and the author does well to keep us on tenterhooks and not to reveal too much.  

ANNA MARKLIN'S FAMILY CHRONICLES is self-published and only available as an e-book. The Smashwords version caters for all formats at $3.99 while the Amazon one is of course for your Kindle at $2.99.

My rating: 4.3

I've also reviewed
4.4, CANDIED CRIME
4.1, LIQUORICE TWISTS
4.2, THE COSY KNAVE  

About the Author

About the author   Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen was born in Denmark in 1961. She works as a teacher, and in her spare time she reads and writes crime fiction in Danish and English.   

One of her stories appeared in "Discount Noir", a collection of flash fiction stories, in 2010 (editors Steve Weddle & Patricia Abbott).   In 2011 she published a couple of short stories plus two anthologies of flash fiction, "CANDIED CRIME, DJ's Daim Stories volume I" and "LIQUORICE TWISTS, DJ's Daim Stories volume II".   
Her first English novel, THE COSY KNAVE  (alternative title "Murder deLight") is a humorous and cosy mystery which takes place in Yorkshire.

Review: THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE, Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis

• File Size: 831 KB
• Print Length: 321 pages
• Publisher: Soho Crime (November 8, 2011)
• Translated from Danish
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004NNUXXE
• source: I bought it

Synopsis (Amazon)

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Read more by clicking on the Amazon link - too much of the story was revealed for my liking.

My take

From the start THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE is full of puzzles. In the Kindle edition that I read there was a sort of unannounced foreword which describes how Nina is manhandling a large suitcase from somewhere to where her car is parked, and her discovery of the boy inside the suitcase when she opens it. This passage is not repeated in the text of the book and I presume it serves the function of the "hook". There is a later related passage but the content of these few pages is not repeated. You can read this passage for yourself if you click on the book cover above and explore the extract on Amazon.

In the opening pages of the main part of the book the reader is introduced to a range of characters who seem to be unconnected, and gradually we piece together what seems to have happened. While we are pretty sure we know the identity of the boy, there is still the question of why he was taken, and how the situation will be resolved.

THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE focusses on two women of great strength: Nina Borg, Danish Red Cross nurse and compulsive do-gooder, and the Lithuanian mother whose 3 year old boy goes missing and who undertakes her own investigation into his disappearance. And there are the men almost without principles: the man who is commissioned to snatch the boy, and the one who pays for it to be done. We see the story from a number of points of view.

For me piecing together the elements of this puzzle became almost compulsive too. A great story, well written, plenty of clues, a few red herrings, and some issues to think about.There are several possible reasons for why the boy has been snatched and a small tidbit of information dropped casually about half way through the book pointed me down the right path. However that did not detract from my enjoyment as I had to stay on board to see if I was right.

My rating: 4.8

Other reviews to read:

• Petrona
• Crime Scraps Review
• A.V. Club (not a favourable one)

About the authors (from Amazon)

Lene Kaaberbøl was born in Copenhagen in 1960 was 15 when her first two books were published, and since then she has written more than thirty novels and children's books. She has won several national and international awards for her fiction, and her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. At her recent nomination for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the IBBY Committee wrote: "She is incredibly skilled at constructing universes and shows remarkable loyalty to her stories and her characters. Lene Kaaberbøl's writing captivates the reader; her worlds draw you in, move you, make you laugh and cry and give you ample food for thought. And it is our assessment that her works have not just national and international potential, but the potential to become classics."

While fantasy is her preferred genre when writing for children and YA, there is nothing remotely fairytale-like about her crime novels for adults. The Boy in the Suitcase, written in collaboration with Agnete Friis, was called a "first rate thriller" by Michelle Wiener of Associated Press: "Written in that sparse, uniquely Scandinavian style sure to draw comparisons with a certain blockbuster trilogy (this is better), this story packs plenty of emotional suspense and interpersonal friction without veering into melodrama."