Embarrassing

So I have this pile of book on the corner of my desk. I've read them all, but not written about them. That's not the embarrassing part. The embarrassing part is that the one of the top of the pile might need rereading before I write about it.

I look at the title, Invisible Murder and the authors Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis and I nearly draw blanks. I'm pretty sure that Kaaberbøl and Friis are names on my "to read" list. But the title??

The blurb on the back of the book rings some bells. Hungarian Roma squatting  in an abandoned Copenhagen garage. They're getting sick and dying. (That sounds like invisible death, but murder?)

The main "investigator" in this mystery is nurse Nina Borg, working for the Red Cross in a refugee program. There are Roma connections across Europe. There's a young Roma man who wants nothing more than his law degree, which a university professor won't approve because the man is a Roma. But there are people who want a buried canister and its

Kaaberbøl and Friis

radioactive contents that have been buried in the abandoned garage. Oh, and there is an active and violent anti-Muslim terrorist group.

This one will keep you fascinated and wondering; wondering especially about the motivations of nurse Borg and student Sandor. And if you wait a few months before thinking about it, you might be wondering why you don't remember details about the plot and action.

Have you read Invisible Murder. Write. Tell this little bit of the world how much you remember and what you thought of it.

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• Anonymous review at Mysterious Reviews
• Doreen Sheridan's review at Criminal Element
• Karen's review at EuroCrime
• Anonymous review at Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Big books from a small country

Jussi Adler-Olsen is touted on a cover of one his books as "Denmark's number one crime writer." I think that means he's the number one writer of crime fiction. He's part of the highly touted Nordic mystery writers group. Thank Stieg Larsson for getting publishers and many readers to pay attention. Well, there are others to thank as well. Many of them I've written about here since I'm part of the fan club. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greenland, and Iceland and all the little islands near them (even though some are parts of Scotland now). Of course, American audiences only get to see the really good ones, I presume.

Adler-Olsen

Adler-Olsen is very good. At least the two books of his I read in the past few months have been very good. They are both copyright 2014, though it's difficult to imagine them being produced simultaneously.

The primary characters in the books I've seen are Detective Carl Mørck, his assistant Assad and secretary Rose. Mørck is a "retired" cop who has been put in charge of Department Q, the section of the cop shop that deals with old, open cases. There are three people in Department Q. Like many detectives in the literary world, Mørck has been pushed into his position because he didn't play well with bureaucracy and protocol and hierarchy. It also gives the author more leeway in inventing story lines.

Adler-Olsen wrote both of these books by telling two stories: one from the past (that activates Department Q) and one from the present (which brings Mørck into conflict with the bosses who exiled him to the basement offices of Q).

The story from the past is told in a pretty straight forward way (although interrupted by chapters set in the present). But the story set in the present, because it involves learning about the story from the past relates the discovery of events from the past in chronologically reverse order (Mørck learns about the most recent things first).

While reading, I imagine Adler-Olsen with two time lines on his desk, one for each story. And he draws lines connecting things in the past with things in the present. That way he keeps clear what the people in the present know about the past, and he keeps things revealed about the past relevant to events in the present.

Hey, and not one word about present or past tenses, until now.

Both books are good and I enjoyed reading them. In Conspiracy of Faith, Department Q is assigned to investigate a message found in a bottle in the ocean near Greenland. The paper in the bottle leads everyone to think its origin is Denmark. The message is only partly readable, but it might imply a murder.

In the course of investigating the message from the bottle, Mørck uncovers more recent crimes that might be connected to the old one. And one of the clues is that they all involve tiny Christian cults that have tried to separate themselves from the evil world.

In The Purity of Vengeance, Department Q begins investigating new evidence in a 30-year disappearance. When Assad and Rose discover that a number of other people disappeared on same weekend three decades ago, and that a couple of the people on the fringes of several cases are still acting strangely, the hunt is on.

I think I liked The Purity of Vengeance better, but that might be because I read that one second and had figured out the method in Adler-Olsen's writing. In any case, I liked reading both books -- well, as much as I can enjoy reading about awful crimes committed by awful people. I haven't yet resolved that one. Have you?

Have you read any of Adler-Olsen's books? How did you like them? Write (Reading@SideTrack.org). Tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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• Author's web site
• Andrew Caffrey's review in The Boston Globe
• Mary Ann Grossman's review in Scandinavian Crime Fiction
• Joe Goer's review at Tzer Island
• Anonymous' review in The Drowning Machine

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Danish police mystery

Someone, somewhen recommended Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes. It ended up at the top of my alphabetical "to read" list.

Adler-Olsen's whole name is Carl Valdemar Jussi Henry Adler-Olsen. An online biography notes that he grew up in "several mental hospitals" in Denmark. (His father was a doctor at the hospitals.) He studied medicine and politics, authored cartoon scripts and comic books, and, in 1997, began writing fiction.  

The Keeper of Lost Causes is his first fiction publication. At 400 pages it's about 100 pages too long.

The mystery is satisfyingly complex and the detective work seems deftly done. There are truly awful sections about a kidnap victim tortured for years in isolation.  

Adler-Olsen keeps things moving adequately in the main story line. But there are too many words.

I nearly awarded this an improbability medal for the way Adler-Olsen wrapped things up at the end. I don't think things work that way.

This was not one of those books I wanted to read because I enjoyed the reading. It wasn't so awful that I wanted to drop it in the wastebasket. I did have to keep taking breaks while reading.

The main character is a middle aged detective who is in the midst of his mid-life crisis and PTSD. In spite of his determination to take advantage of his situation to hide until retirement, he gets sucked into this cold case.

It was made into a movie in Denmark in 2013. It's showing in selected US "art houses" now.

Okay. Anyone else read The Keeper of Lost Causes? What did you think? Write. Tell us in this little bit of the world how you reacted.

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• The author's web site
• Dale Stahl's thoughts on this blog a couple years ago
• Anonymous review at Mysterious Reviews
• Anonymous review at Kirkus Reviews
Anonymous review at Seattle Mystery Bookshop web site Film review in the Sydney Morning Herald

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More Scandinavian mystery fiction

Dale Stahl wrote as promised because he finished the Jussi Adler-Olsen Department Q novel he'd begun.

Here's what he had to say:

I enjoy Jussi Adler-Olsen's Dept. Q novels. However, I notice a persistent theme among some of these Scandinavian/Northern European-type authors: a tendency toward apocalyptic views of human nature and overcoming obstacles to solve a crime.

[My note to Dale: go watch a couple Ingmar Bergman films.]

Adler-Olsen's main character is Carl Mørck, who is a classic, irascible, irritable guy who is more thoughtful and smarter than everyone else on the detective force. But, he's likable for his human desires, foibles, heart pounding self doubt and limitations. Still, the crime in the first Dept. Q novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes, is so outrageous because of the horrific treatment and torture of the victim, that it is almost beyond believability. If it weren't for the real life treatment of someone like Jaycee Dugard (held captive for 18 years), I might have just thrown the book away. Still, there is something compelling about Mørck and his assistant Assad. In addition, I always find a a novel in which the plot revolves around a cold case or a past event compelling. I liked it and was glad I read it.

Then I got the follow-up book, The Absent One, and was even more irritated by the ridiculous, over-the-top crimes and bad behavior of the gang of suspects: wealthy boarding school kids who delight in sexual promiscuity, violence, and the torture of animals and innocent people. It irritated the hell out of me, yet I am Scandinavian and have just enough pessimism about human nature to believe that there are people out there who are that base and brutal. So, I read the book doggedly to the end, and I will be damned if I don't read the next one.

The finish was absurd, the denouement implausible, but I want to find out if Mørck ever gets to have a relationship with his crush and therapist, Mona. And I want to find out if he ever solves the crime which involved an ambush that killed one of his two best friends and paralyzed the other. That story was begun in the first book.

[Dale seems repelled by the savagery; attracted by the romance and the mystery. Those of us who read murder mysteries (even if they're cozies) have strange motives, don't we]

[Questions: Is it a coincidence that Mørck's assistant has the same name as the former dictator of Syria? And, is it a coincidence that Mankell's detective Wallander has a black lab named Jussi?]

[One answer from a publication "In the Footsteps of Wallander," a tourist brochure from the Ystad (Sweden) Tourist Office: Wallander named "the dog Jussi after the famous mid-20th century Swedish tenor Jussi Björling."]

Have you read anything by Jussi Adler-Olsen? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted.

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• The author's web site
• Tina Nunnally's review of The Keeper of Lost Causes at Mysteries in Paradise
• Anonymous review of The Keeper of Lost Causes at His Futile Preoccupations
• Another anonymous review of The Keeper of Lost Causes at All the Books I Can Read
• Candace's review of The Absent One at She Knows Book Lounge
• M. A. Orthofer's review of The Absent One at Complete Review

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A twofer

Dan Conrad mentioned he was reading a William Kent Krueger novel. I've enjoyed a couple of Krueger's books, but found others too intense for my bedtime reading. (If I can't get to sleep after reading a chapter or two, I know I won't enjoy the rest of the story. Yes, I know I could read before 9:00 pm and do it in a chair instead of in bed, but that would require a yoga-like flexibility that I have trouble with.)

Dan was reading Vermillion Drift, and I asked him to let me know what he thought of it. He did and added a bonus.

You asked me to write and tell you what I thought of William Krueger’s Vermillion Drift. What I think is that it is a well written, highly engaging and satisfying tale. There was some of the gruesomeness you noted in his other books, but since it mostly took place 40 years earlier it was not particularly disturbing. I enjoyed the novel, and particularly that the main character’s links to the Native American community and culture are critical to unraveling the mystery.

Now, that's what I like to hear. I think I'll add this to my "to read" list.

Then Dan added:

But that’s not really why I’m writing. I next picked up another book from the library and began reading. What happened next, occurs about once in a hundred books. About 1:30 a.m. I looked at my watch and said: “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way I can go to sleep until I’ve finished.” And so I read on to the end. The book is titled The Boy In The Suitcase by two Danish women, Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, and is the first of their “Nina Borg” series to be translated into English.

Nina Borg is a Red Cross nurse in Denmark, but that has little to do with the story which is about her going to a public locker at the request of a friend and finding there a three year old boy, naked and drugged, in a suitcase!

The rest of the story is told in a series of short chapters, each chronicling the actions of the four or five main characters. Unlike some such frameworks, each chapter moves the story forward and never feels like sidestepping or going backward. Gradually you learn the who, how and why as you move, with rapidly increasing pace, to the denouement. If and when the next in the series is translated, I will have my reservation in on the first day!

Now, there's a great recommendation. The Boy In The Suitcase is also going on my "to-read" list, and probably above Vermillion Drift. Have you read either of these? How did you react? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Krueger's web page for Vermillion Drift
• Andy Plonka's reveiw at The Mystery Reader
• An unsigned review at Rhaposody in Books
• B. Morrison's review in her blog
• Marilyn Stasio mentions Vermillion Drift in her New York Times Book Review column

• Richard Lipez's review of The Boy in the Suitcase from The Washington Post
• Hugh Ryan's review in The Daily Beast
• Noah Cruickshank's review of The Boy in the Suitcase at the A.V. Club

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On the left are links to buy books. On the right are links to buy e-books.

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Double failure

I'll take these failures on myself, but I had lots of help.

Nancy brought Connie Willis' All Clear home from the library. I picked it up and took it to the cabin named Sidetrack because I'd read The Doomsday Book, Remake, and To Say Nothing of the Dog years ago and liked them. There was another Willis book, Promised Land, that I wasn't so fond of.

All Clear was advertised on the dust jacket as another of Willis' time travel novels. I'd found that to be an entertaining and clever device in earlier books. The plot device is that Oxford University historians about 50 years from now discover a method of time travel that lets them go into the past as researchers and return to their rooms in mid-21st century Oxford to write eye-witness accounts of historical events.

Willis' characters are most interested in what went on in London during World War II (as in To Say Nothing of the Dog).

I quickly found out that the 600+ page All Clear was the second of two volumes telling one story. Since I'd read earlier time travel books, I thought I could get by without reading the first volume, Blackout. It turns out I could get by without reading all of the second volume as well.

How many times do I have to read some internal dialogue about a character's fears that she's trapped in the past? Or that she's done something to trap another researcher in the past? Or that one of her colleagues has done something to change the course of history? Well, Willis seemed to think that one or another of her characters just had to say those things to herself every few pages. And how often was it necessary for me to read about the anxieties of getting to work on time or the exact details of what trains were necessary to travel from one part of London to another?

Willis is a successful author, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't need an editor.

[Short aside: Nancy's website features a quotation from T. S. Eliot: "Even a superb writer needs a good editor. A merely good writer needs a superb editor."]

To Say Nothing of the Dog was full of humor and joy. This book was full of anxiety and stress. Okay, the V-1 and V-2 rockets and the Blitz were no fun in London. But the earlier book was also set in London during World War II London. If Blackout, the first volume is a twin to this one, I'd suggest that someone abridge the two and make a (400-page?) science fiction novel out of them. I might have enjoyed reading that and even finished it.

Then I picked up Per Petterson's I Curse the River of Time at the Northfield library. It got on my "To Read" list because of a review in the New York Times. Stacey D'erasmo wrote that "Petterson’s narratives tend to unspool in the first person, in hushed, confidential tones. Tight-lipped with one another, his characters open their hearts to the reader, making us witnesses to their most private selves. He makes the reader lean in, out of the wind, to listen closely..."

I'd read Out Stealing Horses a few years ago and liked it. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for the moody, self-indulgent, un-selfconscious internal dialogues in I Curse the River of Time either. The main character wasn't interesting to me.

Another book I didn't finish.

Oh, well. My "To Read" list is still long. It was disappointing that one of the books on the list is only available from the libary as an e-book for an e-reader. I don't have one of those yet. But books? I can handle lots of them.

Have you read Connie Willis' All Clear? or Per Petterson's I Curse the River of Time? How did you react? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your experience.

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• Connie Willis' web site
• An admiring review by Julie Phillips in The Village Voice
• A less admiring review by Dorman T Schlinder in the Denver Post
• Per Petterson's web site
• An admiring review of Petterson's book by Kristin Ohlson at Cleveland. com
• Rachel Cusk's positive review of I Curse the River of Time from The Guardian (UK)

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