The Scarred Woman by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Published in Denmark in 2016; published in translation by Dutton on September 19, 2017

The Scarred Woman is an eventful novel. I would recommend reading others in the series first because, while the main plot stands on its own, a compelling subplot will make more sense to readers who are familiar with the earlier novels.

The main story involves three young women who are receiving public benefits. They aren’t particularly interested in working, and at least one of them is dependent on the kindness of men … any men she can find who will fund her lifestyle. A social worker named Anne-Line is fed up with attractive young women who tell her lies in order to extend their benefits. Anne-Line is dying of cancer and, having little to lose, decides to mete out her own form of harsh justice.

One of the young women, Denise, has a disagreeable grandmother who has been reluctantly funding Denise’s mother and Denise. The grandmother dies, which spins off another murder investigation that involves additional victims. Then the three young women decide to commit their own crime, which leads to even more murders.

The police investigators in Copenhagen have their hands full. None of that should concern Carl Mørk and his Department Q colleagues, since their task is to investigate cold cases. But the spin-off story involving Denise’s grandmother ties into a cold case, and Carl always enjoys stepping on toes by becoming involved in current murder investigations.

The subplot involves Rose from Department Q. Past novels have suggested that Rose’s mental health is precarious. In The Scarred Woman, Rose is having serious psychological problems rooted in her past. Carl, Assad, and Gordon take a break from investigating other crimes to investigate Rose’s past, unearthing still more crimes that need to be solved.

The plot is complex but it never becomes confusing. Rose is the continuing character who gets the most attention in The Scarred Woman, and Jussi Adler-Olsen provides significant new insights into her character. Carl and Assad are always entertaining, and while this novel does nothing to reveal Assad’s mysterious past, it does allow him to assert himself when Carl gets on his nerve by correcting his Danish. In past novels, Assad has almost been used as comic relief, but this novel is darker than the others, and Assad’s reaction fits that tone. At the same time, Adler-Olsen lets the reader see Assad’s tender side in a key scene involving Rose.

I always look forward to reading novels in the Department Q series. The Scarred Woman is one of the best.

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The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen

First published in Denmark in 2014; published in translation by Dutton on September 8, 2015

The Hanging Girl is tied with the first Department Q novel as my favorite entry (so far) in this excellent series. The mystery is complex but credible. The story builds suspense but doesn’t skimp on character development. Humor and drama are carefully balanced. The book is long but it never moves slowly and it ends in a burst of excitement.

A police sergeant on an outlying island finally gives up on a case he could never solve, but not without asking Department Q for help. Carl wants nothing to do with it. As usual, Rose bullies him into investigating the case, an unsolved hit-and-run that left a young girl’s body hanging from the tree branches in which it was entangled.

When Carl, Rose, and Assad look into the old case and a more recent death, Carl sees nothing worth investigating and wants to go home. As is the custom in these books, Carl is outvoted by his subordinates and the subsequent investigation leads to a deepening mystery.

As that investigation progresses, alternating chapters fill us in on a story of several missing women and of rivalries for the attention of Atu, a charismatic fellow who worships the sun. Another woman, not yet missing, is at risk.

An ongoing storyline in these novels concerns an incident in which Carl and his colleague Hardy were shot. Carl blames his cowardice for the fact that Hardy was left paralyzed. That subplot is advanced a bit in The Hanging Girl, more than it has been in recent novels. Jussi Adler-Olsen seems to be setting up a significant development in that subplot in an upcoming novel.

Also advancing is the evolving mystery of Assad’s background. Assad is my favorite character in the series, an outwardly gentle and decent man (most of the time) who clearly has a violent history. Each novel teases the reader with hits of Assad’s past, but it is the Assad of the present who plays a heroic and self-sacrificing role in The Hanging Girl.

I always learn something when I read one of these novels. This one features a good bit of interesting information about the intersection of astrology, astronomy, and theology. More importantly, it features a surprising plot that continues to twist until the truth is finally revealed.

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The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Published by Dutton on February 24, 2015

In a departure from the Department Q police procedurals that Jussi Alder-Olsen usually writes, The Alphabet House combines a war story with a modern crime thriller. At the same time, it does not fit within either genre. The Alphabet House is more a psychological novel, an in-depth exploration of two personalities. For the most part, I enjoyed reading it. I appreciated the thought that went into it. I admired the writing style. I just didn't buy it.

Bryan and James, a pilot British pilot and navigator, are shot down behind enemy lines. Fleeing from pursuers, they board a passing hospital train full of wounded SS officers. They assume the guise of unconscious patients in a car that is mysteriously crowded with comatose officers who do not appear to be wounded. They wind up in a hospital ward, known as the Alphabet House, where their survival depends upon passing themselves off as shell-shocked Nazi officers.

Bryan and James are not the only patients faking mental illness. A long stretch of the book deals with German malingerers who make trouble for James. Why they do so is never quite clear and, while this section of the book is not dull, I'm not sure its contribution to the story justifies the number of words that are devoted to it. The malingerers do add to the action in a tense scene at the end of Part One.

Part Two begins in 1972. Bryan is now a grumpy specialist in gastric diseases and sports medicine. The plot takes Bryan back to Germany in search of a past from which he has not fully recovered. His impersonation of an SS officer during the war comes back to haunt him.

The Alphabet House is interesting but not particularly exciting or emotionally engaging. Its length works against it. The book could easily have been condensed. Two guys lying in bed thinking "I hope we don't get caught" is less than thrilling even with an occasional break the monotony. Only the beginning and the end of Part One generate any tension. Part Two is better, particularly toward the end, but the actions of the German malingers (particularly in Part Two) almost always struck me as contrived, if not abysmally stupid. I just didn't buy the story that Adler-Olsen eventually got around to telling. The narrative drags on long after the climax and some of the last chapters add little of value. I did, however, like the way the story finally ends. The ending has the virtue of honesty.

The quality of Adler-Olsen's prose and the interesting characters he crafted kept me reading. Still, I formed no emotional connection with the characters, in part because I didn't buy into their reality (particularly James) any more than I believed the German malingerers were real. None of that stopped me from wondering what would happen next.

The story is not quite like anything else I've read, so Adler-Olsen scores points for originality. If this had been a shorter, tighter novel with characters who behaved in ways I could accept, I would give it a stronger recommendation. As it stands, I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm disappointed that it did not realize its potential to be an outstanding novel.

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The Marco Effect by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Published by Dutton on September 9, 2014

The Marco Effect begins with a murder in the jungle of Cameroon. René Eriksen, who heads the Development Assistance office for the government of Denmark, has been conspiring with a corrupt banker to misappropriate development funds. Their fear of exposure leads to more murders.

A second plotline centers on Marco Jameson, one of many children who beg for or steal money on the streets of Denmark for an unscrupulous man named Zola. Unlike the other kids, Marco is bright and rebellious. To avoid a disabling confrontation with Zola, Marco runs, but in the act of running stumbles upon a secret that further endangers his life.

The third plotline finally brings Carl Mørck and the other members of Department Q into the story. Carl's subordinate Rose Knudsen has little interest in the department's current case (she could solve that one in her sleep) but takes an interest in a poster that seeks information about a man who disappeared two years earlier. The same poster is of interest to Marco, providing the first link that connects the stories. Soon enough, all three storylines have woven into a cohesive whole.

Characters are the strength of the Department Q series, particularly Rose and Hafez el-Assad, the insubordinate detectives who nominally work for Carl while following their own instincts and using their own unorthodox methods to solve cases. Assad remains my favorite character in the series. He is the most perceptive, the funniest, and the most dangerous of the three, while his mysterious background adds another layer of intrigue to the novels. Carl's personal life, established as a mess in earlier novels, is even muddier in this one as he encounters new troubles with his old girlfriend and the possibility of a new girlfriend (or at least a one night shag).

Marco, betrayed by everyone he ever cared about, might be the most sympathetic character Jussi Adler-Olsen has created in the series. Much of the novel's excitement and pace comes from Marco's efforts to avoid capture. The sections of the novel that follow the conspirators and their double-crossing behavior sometimes drag, giving the impression of a novel that might be a hundred pages longer than it needed to be. For the most part, however, the pace is suitable for a police procedural that depends on characterization and sleuthing more than action to sustain the reader's interest.

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The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen

First published in Denmark in 2010; published in translation by Dutton on December 31, 2013

The difficulty with revenge, particularly when served cold, is that people change. What seems like just retribution may turn out to be a harsh judgment visited upon a repentant transgressor who seeks (and deserves) forgiveness. The lesson of The Purity of Vengeance is that revenge is a dish best not served.

Between 1923 and 1961, a number of women in Denmark who were deemed genetically inferior -- ostensibly "feeble-minded," the women were often regarded as dangerously promiscuous, particularly if they became pregnant -- were institutionalized on an island called Sprogø. There they were subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations. This dark history provides the foundation for The Purity of Vengeance.

The woman seeking revenge is Nete Hermansen, who (with good reason) blames six people for the various misfortunes she has suffered throughout her life. In 1987, a couple of years after her angry husband dies in an accident that she survives, Nete writes a letter to each of the six with a promise to make them wealthy. During the course of the novel, we learn what those individuals did to Nete and what Nete did to them.

Interwoven with Nete's story is a missing persons investigation that takes place in 2010, undertaken by Carl Mørck, who is still stuck in the basement with Assad and schizophrenic Rose, his underlings in Department Q. And interwoven with the story of the investigation is the story of Curt Wad, who is still practicing medicine at 88, talking Nordic women out of having abortions while doing quite the opposite with women he regards as coming from an undesirable heritage. Wad is the driving force behind Denmark's Purity Party, a political movement of calcified ideas that is gaining ground in 2010.

The Purity of Vengeance does the things a good crime novel needs to do, and a little more. The plot is engaging although, until the very end, not particularly surprising. It nevertheless has a degree of depth that most thrillers lack. Building upon personalities established in the earlier Department Q novels, the characters have substance. Carl revisits (and continues to be haunted by) the moment of cowardice that branded him in The Keeper of Lost Causes, and we learn a bit more about the mysterious Assad (although just enough to make him even more enigmatic). Carl is going through some domestic drama (involving both his ex-wife and current girlfriend) that Jussi Adler-Olsen approaches with a light touch, preventing the novel from getting bogged down in maudlin issues of domestic strife. Even the vilest criminals have sympathetic moments, making them believable characters rather than caricatures of evil. Nete's motivation for her appalling behavior is especially easy to understand.

The downside to this novel is that it's longer than it needs to be, and the second half starts to drag a bit, but the pace picks up as the story nears its chilling conclusion. The Purity of Vengeance is a worthy addition to the ever-growing collection of Scandanavian crime fiction.

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