La mujer que arañaba las paredes (Departamento Q, #1) (2024)

(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: Characters gush ad nauseam about the victim's beauty, I suppose, to make her victimization seem all the more tragic.

Another Nordic noir! This is the first of a seven- book Danish series about Deputy Superintendent Carl Morck. It’s a police procedural.

Like all fictional detectives, Morck has his issues. He’s in the process of getting divorced although he still sees his wife and she likes to tell him about her young lovers. He’s blunt in the romance department, always hitting on the wrong woman, especially ones wearing a wedding ring. He’s also psychologically damaged from a recent incident where he feels responsible for the death of one of his colleagues and the paralysis of another. He wasn’t able to draw his weapon and can’t open up to the police psychologist. He has panic attacks. Some of his colleagues blame him for the incident. So he has been ‘kicked upstairs’ (actually to the basem*nt) to work on cold cases with a Syrian partner who provides insight into the case as well as humor.

The first cold case he works on, the subject of the book, is truly bizarre. A female Danish member of parliament has been missing for five years. We know from the beginning she is still alive and being held in solitary confinement in an air-pressurized chamber in retribution for something she did as a child. (She doesn’t know what.)

The parliament member had been involved in an auto accident as a girl that killed her parents and gave her younger brother brain damage. The police investigation in which she disappeared off of a ferry boat was badly botched years ago. The police simply assume she had jumped or fallen off the ferry and drowned. Little by little Morck solves the case.

I thought it was a good read and it kept my attention all the way through. The dozen-or-so chapters that deal with the captive woman’s psychological state could be shorter and less repetitive. But still a good story.

Copenhagen from creativeboom.com
The author from billedbladet.dk

Imagine if the brooding detective Kurt Wallander from the Henning Mankell series accidentally wandered into the plot of a Stieg Larsson novel and you’d have a pretty good idea of what this book is like. Unfortunately, we don’t get a new Salander, but we do get a pretty interesting and flawed character in Carl Morck.

Morck is a Danish police detective who survived being shot in the head during an attack that left another detective dead and one paralyzed. While Morck has returned to duty, he’s so depressed and wracked by survivor’s guilt that he’s barely lifting a finger on his cases, and his grumpiness has alienated the other cops. His boss decides to take a sour old shot-in-the-head lemon and make lemonade out of him when national politics force him to create a department to work on high profile cold cases. Morck is ‘promoted’ to be in charge of the new Department Q and sent down to a basem*nt office.

At first, Morck is happy to be left alone in the basem*nt where he can smoke all he wants and play computer solitaire all day, but when he learns that the department is using the money allotted for Department Q to beef up the homicide division, he demands a piece of the action including a department car, getting the basem*nt fixed up and his own assistant to make the coffee and do the sh*t work. However, he gets more than just someone to answer the phone with Assad, a Syrian immigrant who is curious about the case files. When the political pressure to show some progress mounts, Morck reluctantly ends up looking into the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful female politician, Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years before. In a parallel story, we learn what happened to Merete and her horrible fate.

There was a lot I found intriguing about this book. The Morck character and the set-up of him being exiled to Department Q was an interesting idea, and I really liked this grumpy guilt-ridden detective with a messy personal life. I also loved the dynamic between him and Assad with the bright and curious assistant messing up Morck’s plans to sit quietly in the basem*nt and smoke some cigarettes. Assad can read a case file and come up with legitimate deductions and questions, but while he’s smart enough to track down a long missing piece of critical evidence, he doesn’t know any better than to handle it once he finds it.

Unfortunately, Morck’s messy personal life seemed to be a bit much after a while. He keeps getting phone calls and giving money to his estranged wife and after a while you just want to scream at him to get a divorce lawyer and change his number.

While the circ*mstances of Merete’s abduction and her circ*mstances are disturbing and horrible, I figured out the villain’s motive early in the book so that was pretty obvious. Plus, after a while Merete’s predicament starts to go over the top and takes a turn onto Torture p*rn Avenue and that’s not a neighborhood I like visiting.

Still, despite some clunky writing (which could be a translation issue), I liked Morck and Assad, and I found the basic premise intriguing. I’ve also got a big streak of Danish heritage, but know almost nothing about Denmark so it was fun to soak up a little of the old home country in a better than average crime thriller.

Danish detective Carl Mørck, a brilliant if mercurial detective, has been off work after a shooting which left one colleague dead, another quadriplegic and himself wounded. His colleague taking the shot, which would otherwise have killed Morck has left him psychologically as well as physically damaged. In addition, Morck feels himself weakened in the eyes of the subsequent investigators by his inability to supply almost any eye witness evidence to the massacre. His superiors find a way out when politicians decide they want action on unsolved cases and offer new finance to the police department.

Morck forces himself back into work, creates his office at the end of a corridor in the basem*nt and with a probably illegal immigrant as his cleaner-cum secretary-cum investigator. The case that forces itself to their attention has forced itself to ours even earlier because Adler-Olssen has been dropping in chapters describing a woman imprisoned in a metal tank for seven years. Why is she there? Who are her unseen captors? How will Morck make any sort of progress?

It becomes clear that Danish politics is just as dirty as any other country, perhaps exacerbated by its many parties and shifting coalitions.
Morck discovers several suspects and families who have felt themselves driven to extremes by the failure of a welfare state to offer succour in individual suffering, even if those families were once wealthy and successful. So successful that they once acquired and have hung on to private property where prisoners may be kept for years - but so deranged that they would want to keep prisoners for years!

Interesting characters, a sarcastic but amusing protagonist and plenty of suspense - very enjoyable.

4.5 stars:
I found a new Nordic crime author, Jussi Adler-Olsen! And with that author comes a new series for me, The Department Q series. “The Keeper of lost Causes” introduces the reader to Carl Morck, who upon introduction has been “promoted” to this new department, Department Q which is where all the cold cases go. The reason for the promotion is a police mission gone bad in which one of his best friends ends up paralyzed, another dead. This guilt follows Carl and almost becomes a character.

His first case involves a missing person, Danish stateswoman Merete Lynggaard. She mysteriously disappeared during a ferry crossing with her brain-damaged brother, Uffe. Ashe was presumed to have committed suicide. Adler-Olsen slowly builds the story. We learn more about Merete and her brother. Slowly Carl reimagines Merete and Uffe’s life and last days prior to her disappearance. It’s 5 years cold.

Aided by his new assistant, Hafez al-Assad, the two at times seem bungling and other times are stealthy. Of course, Carl is required to undergo counselling after the tragic and devastating shooting, which becomes a nuisance in multiple ways.

Adler-Olsen tells the story in two different time frames. 2007 opens with the tragic stakeout-gone-bad that leaves Carl partnerless. Five years earlier, 2002 contains the clues to Merete’s disappearance. The 2007 portions are real-time, as Carl and al-Assad diligently go through Merete’s life and last days. The 2002 time allows the reader to learn that not only is Merete alive, but she’s being held under bizarre circ*mstances. We learn more of Merete and Uffe’s life prior to her disappearance. Kudos to Adler-Olsen for dreaming up a torture that is not only diabolical, but crazy.

The joy is the twisty story and Carl’s journey. There are reasons this is one of Denmark���s bestselling series. This isn’t a bloody crime noir; this is a psychological thriller. Dark humor and wit combine with the frenzied pace. Carl is the perfect protagonist, with his tortured soul, active wit, and keen mind. Add the perfect sidekick, Assad, “The Department Q” series is one I will be following.

I listened to the audible audio, narrated by Erik Davies. He was excellent!

”She’d been lying on the floor thinking about books. That was something she often did in order not to think about the life she might have had if only she’d made different choices. When she thought about books, she could move into a whole different world. Just remembering the feeling of the dry surface and inexplicable roughness of the paper could ignite a blaze of yearning inside of her. The scent of evaporated cellulose and printer’s ink. Thousands of times now she’d sent her thoughts into her imaginary library and selected the only book in the world that she knew she could recall without embellishing it...
A philosophical little bear named Winnie the Pooh was her salvation. her only defense against madness. Pooh and all the animals in Hundred Acre Wood.

Merete could have used a Pooh and a balloon

Merete Lynggaard disappears in 2002. She is a well known political figure and because she is beautiful she is also photographed extensively by a roving band of paparazzi. They get paid more when it is chilly and her nipples are noticeable through her blouse. (This is a voyeuresque world.) Despite her very public professional life she keeps her private life...private. She doesn’t date even though there are legions of men that would love to spend time with her. She has more important duties such as getting home to her brother who is afflicted with brain damage suffered in a car accident that also took the lives of their parents. She has enemies as do all politicians, but would any of them try to hurt her?

The book flashes between 2002 and 2007.

In 2007 we meet Detective Carl Morck a grumpy, depressed, at time acerbic man who no one wants to work with. When the government insists the Copenhagen police department form a cold case department the Chief of Detectives jumps at the chance to assign Carl to that department which also happens to be in the basem*nt...way...way...away from the rest of the detectives.

In Department Q

Carl is the darkest, dankest corner of the basem*nt of the police department.

Jussi Adler-Olsen explores the politics inherent in any organization as the Chief tries to keep as much of that government money allocated to Department Q in a slush fund and Carl Morck starts to understand that he has leverage to certainly obtain more than what they first gave him for his department. In one of his negotiations with the Chief he gets an assistant, a Syrian, with a dubious passport who is supposed to help clean Department Q, but once Carl discovers how resourceful Assad is he starts to use him to help track down clues and also obtain what he needs from other departments. Assad gets along with people much better than Carl.

Now Carl does have some legitimate issues that can account for some of his anti-social behavior. He has recently returned to work from being shot. He and two other detectives were investigating a murder. They did not clear the murder scene the way we are used to seeing it done on American TV. It turns out the killer is still there and in a blaze of gunfire all three detectives are shot. One dead, one paralyzed from the neck down, and Carl with a grazed head. Things happened so fast that Carl didn’t even have a chance to pull his weapon. When he replays what happened frame by frame in his head he realizes he did have time. He froze. He is cleared, but the guilt hangs like a shroud over everything he does.

Carl is lonely and when an attractive female walks across his vision he has to reel his tongue back in. He is especially attracted to married women. Adler-Olsen didn’t really explore that in depth, but it does make me wonder if part of their attraction for Carl is their unattainability or maybe he is attracted to older women more likely to be married. If you listen carefully you might actually hear the thump under Carl’s desk as the sexy psychiatrist Mona Ibsen walks into his office.

”Mona Ibsen sat down across from him. The light from outside on Otto Monsteds Gade shone on the back of her neck, creating a halo around her head. the soft light revealed delicate lines on her face; her lips were sensual and a deep red. Everything about her signaled high class. Carl locked eyes with her so as not to dwell on her voluptuous breasts. Nothing in the world could make him want to break out of the state he was in.”

I think that state is called lust Carl. I had to put my hands over my eyes during the rest of this scene. He mucks things up so badly you’d think he’d never talked to a woman before in his life.

Jussi Adler-Olsen even looks like a guy who just wrote a really good book.

This book is a slow burn. If you have read Scandinavian books before you will expect this. I think it was around 130 pages that the book really hooked me. The book switches between Merete before 2007 and Carl investigating her cold case in 2007. As the plot picks up momentum and we learn more and more about what has happened to Merete you will find yourself on the edge of your seat. You will find yourself, despite his best efforts, to start to like Carl. You will wonder if some woman will take pity on Carl and haul his ashes. By the end you will already be looking for volume two in the Department Q series.

Book one in a series set in Denmark featuring Detective Inspector Carl Morck, a man who believes he has exhausted his interest in his job and just wants to sit out the remaining years to his retirement. A series of events puts him in charge of a newly established cold case department, he gets an extremely interesting assistant, he finds a case which does interest him and things go from there.

I enjoyed it enormously! I found Carl's attitude amusing and his sarcastic comments made me laugh out loud. Assad was an absolute delight and goodness knows what else we are going to find out about him.

The suspense was absolutely gripping especially towards the end when the two intrepid heroes were up against a countdown which they were unaware of but the reader knew about. I so wanted to take a quick peek at the final pages to settle my nerves but I restrained myself and just read faster!

So - a good story, lots of interesting police work, great characters, humour, suspense - what more could I ask for? Recommended:)

Hey look! Another gruff male detective with a "crazy" ex. I wonder if he's experienced some prior trauma in the line of duty. Oh, he has. I wonder if he's an outcast in his department? Oh, he is. I wonder if he flouts protocol and pushes boundaries? Oh, he does. I wonder if all the female characters are repeatedly defined by their physical appearance or presumed sexuality. Oh, they are. Fantastic! Now I've got something I can recommend to readers who are interested in cliches, sexism and misogyny.

Un thriller bunicel. Numai că:

1. Făptașul poate fi ghicit cam de pe la jumătatea cărții, cînd mama îi spune captivei Merete Lynggaard că trebuie să plătească pentru ceea ce a făcut. Iar dacă nu știe ce a făcut, are tot timpul să-și amintească: „Noapte bună, Merete. Somn uşor. Acum o să creştem presiunea cu încă o atmosferă. Să vedem dacă asta îţi ajută memoria”.
2. Carl Mørck e un detectiv cu intuiții excelente și destul de c*msecade; comportamentul lui nu explică de ce este antipatizat de colegi și trecut de șeful ăl mare la munca de jos. Munca de jos se numește Departamentul Q. Aici se adună cazurile nerezolvate...
3. Dacă făptașul se insinuează în echipa laboratorului care se întîlnește cu Merete Lynggaard, este greu de justificat faptul că nimeni, dar nimeni nu observă substituirea. Nici unul din delegație nu-și dă seama că au printre ei un intrus. Foarte ciudat...
4. Un criminal versat nu-i atacă pe doi polițiști agili cu o pușcă cu alice, ci cu (măcar) un Kalașnicov sau un aruncător de flăcări.
5. Nu am detectat nicăieri umorul semnalat în prezentarea cărții. Probabil că editorii au un simț al umorului mult mai ascuțit decît mine.
6. Romanul e tradus (precar, nu mai e nevoie să spun) de vestita grupare Graal Soft după o versiune engleză.

P. S. Titlul danez al cărții înseamnă Femeia din cușcă.

So Stieg Larson has drawn me into the world of Scandinavian sleuths. Jussi Adler-Olsen has created a wonderfully weird detective in Carl Morck, who is so damaged mentally that the Copenhagen police department has deep-sixed him in the one-man investigative unit, Department Q. His job is to thaw out cold cases. And he does it brilliantly with the help of a fascinating sidekick, Assad, a Syrian immigrant with a suitcase of mysterious skills. Together they find out what ever happened to a popular politician gone missing. I recommend that you throw in your reading time with keeper of lost causes. It will not be lost hours.

— Sherry Roberts, author of Book of Mercy and Maud's House

Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck has returned to work after a vicious shooting saw one of his team killed and the other a quadriplegic. He escaped with a wound to the head and has unresolved issues of guilt for not doing more to save his colleagues. Back in Homicide no one wants to work with him anymore and Carl just wants to mark time until he can retire, however his Superintendent has other plans and re-assigns him head up to a newly established unit to look into cold cases from all over the country. The only problem is 'Unit' is a misnomer as he is the only detective and has only been assigned a general assistant to help with cleaning and mundane office tasks. Fortunately Assad is no ordinary assistant, a recent Syrian refugee, he has many hidden talents and is keen to see Carl succeed. Somehow he gradually cajoles Carl into looking at a five year old case of a young member of parliament who went missing on a ferry to Germany. She was taking her disabled brother on a trip to Berlin so suicide seems unlikely, but did she suffer an accident or was something more sinister involved?

Carl and Assad's investigation is interwoven with an account of a woman being held hostage by some very dangerous and evil minded people, but neither their motives nor their intentions are clear until much later in the book.

It's hard not to like Carl despite his grumpiness and cynical comments. His living arrangements and relationship with his wife are also unusual and amusing. His special knack of seeing where current investigations in Homicide should be going and telling the detectives what they should be looking at does is not making him many friends, even though he's always right. Assad is a brilliant character. There's obviously a lot more to him than meets the eye and Carl suspects he hasn't told immigration the whole truth. Together they make a very odd couple but the perfect team. The translation reads well while maintaining a very Danish flavour with the perfect tinge of humour. Altogether this is looking like another excellent series to add to my list. 4.5★

Everything can change in an instant.

This seems to be the overwhelming message left by author Jussi Adler-Olsen in his 2007 novel The Keeper of Lost Causes (published in English in 2011 with a translation from Danish by Lisa Hartford).

Everything changed for detective Carl Morck in an instant when he and two colleagues were shot during an investigation. One of his fellow police officers was killed and the other was injured for life in a horrific and traumatic event that has scarred Morck forever after. He is about as wounded and psychologically messed up as a crime fiction protagonist can be, and that seems to be a prerequisite for such characters in the dark world of Nordic Noir.

Add to this that Morck is a particularly abrasive and unlikeable person to begin with and that helps to explain Morck’s surprise when he is promoted to head up a new crime unit, devoted to solving cold cases. Turns out the move was politically motivated to take advantage of some appropriated funds while also shelving a problematic detective. Not born yesterday, Carl figures out how the wind has changed and at first settles comfortably into his basem*nt digs to wait out the next twenty odd years until retirement by playing Sudoku and napping on the clock.

A new hire to his department (consisting of two people) actually wants to do some police work and so the two choose one of the dozens of cold case files and get to work. So begins Adler-Olsen’s introduction of his Department Q series.

A plausible and seemingly interesting enough premise, coupled with the Scandinavian crime fiction theme and this looked like it was headed in all the right directions.

But Morck was more annoying than wounded, and I found myself thinking about Harry Hole or Kurt Wallander. Now those are damaged cops you can follow. Half the time, especially in the dreary sub-plot about his home life, I wanted to go Vito Corleone on his whiney ass, slap him, and tell him to ACT LIKE A MAN!

Adler-Olsen used a narrative structure where he switched perspectives between Morck and the victim in a crime case and following the victim was more appealing than Morck’s detective work. Until Adler-Olsen went overboard and her story turned into a weird sad*stic melodrama. Still, looking back on the book, I felt closer to this storyline than with Morck’s.

Overall I must concede that I liked it, almost kind of grudgingly. Not one of the better Nordic Noir lineups, but Adler-Olsen is a good writer and this is a good concept for more stories.

Danish detective Carl Morck is physically and psychologically damaged after an attempted arrest resulted in the death of one of his partners and the paralysis of another.

The homicide squad doesn't want to work with the difficult detective so he's 'promoted' to head of Department Q, which is tasked with looking into cold cases from all over Denmark. Department Q is given a bare bones space in the cluttered basem*nt and Carl is given one employee - Syrian immigrant Assad - who's officially a sort of janitor.

Assad, however, turns out to be a man of many talents and a gifted detective. In fact he's one of the most amusing and interesting characters in the story.

After futzing around for weeks drinking coffee, goofing off, and ignoring the cold case files on his desk Carl is forced to show some progress in his investigations. Thus he decides to look into the disappearance five years before of Merete Lynggaard of the Social Democratic Party, who vanished from a ferry she was taking with her handicapped brother. Merete's body was never found and her fate is a complete mystery to the cops.

In reality Merete is being held prisoner under appalling conditions for reasons she can't fathom.

The story jumps back and forth between Merete's kidnapping starting in 2002 and what's going on in 2007 during Morck's new investigation. Morck is an intuitive detective, perhaps the best in the homicide department, and with the help of Assad he gathers much new information about Merete's vanishing. A lot of the new details should have been discovered by the original investigators, whom Carl freely criticizes and chastises. These scenes are amusing and oddly satisfying.

Adding to his disaffection Carl has a somewhat complicated private life. His estranged wife and her new boyfriend are constantly sponging money off him and his teenage stepson - who has elected to live with Carl - is a typical adolescent. I kind of wished Carl would get a backbone, give his stepson back to mom, and lock up his wallet - but I suppose it's all part of Carl's story. In addition, Carl has a crush on the new counselor/psychologist in the police department, and rather embarrasses himself.

The villains in the story behave in a horrific fashion but they're clever and their complex plan was well-thought out.

As Carl gets closer to finding Merete her time may just be running out and there's a dramatic suspenseful climax.

The characters in the book are well-portrayed and believable (if you accept that some people behave monstrously) and the story is engaging. I highly recommend this book to mystery lovers and look forward to reading more of this author's work.

You can follow my reviews at http://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com/

Except for the novels of Norwegian Karin Fossum, I hadn’t read any of the Scandinavian crime fiction that’s all the rage. Not Jo Nesbø, not Henning Mankell, not Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, not even Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

OK, so I live in a cave.

For that reason, I really can’t compare Jussi Adler-Olsen’s The Keeper of Lost Causes to other Scandinavian crime novels. Are they all this dark? Are their protagonists as curmudgeonly as Adler-Olsen’s Carl Mørck, a police deputy superintendent whose lost whatever little joy he had in life when one partner was killed and the other paralyzed during an ambush? For expedience’s sake, Carl gets “promoted” to head a cold-case department, nicknamed Department Q. His only staff is the deceptively sweet Hafez al-Assad, a man as adept at housekeeping as he is at ferreting out clues and getting witnesses to talk.

I enjoyed The Keeper of Lost Causes much more than I thought I would, and I got to really appreciate both curmudgeon Carl and the under-estimated Assad. Their uneasy camaraderie rivaled the riveting mystery to make this debut novel a five-star read.

I'm really sorry, it just was not that good. People calling this the next "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" are wrong in a myriad of ways.

First, the writing is just not good. The dialogue is stilted at best and, at times, completely ridiculous. I actually laughed at some of the things the characters said. And they were not supposed to be funny. I don't know how much of this is attributable to the translation, but it needs work. A lot of it.

Second, the protagonist is an asshole. And not a likeable asshole. Not the kind you root for. He's a sad-sack asshole (what are you even still doing married to your wife and paying for her sh*t? Divorce her! DIVORCE. HER. What are you thinking, you moron?). The man is completely unrelateable and he doesn't even have the edge of brilliance to push him over into grudging respect territory. He's lazy and pretty damn slow on the the uptake (thanks for pulling his sh*t together, convenient sidekick!). I greeted his troubles with a resounding "meh". If you want to get better, make some effort. If you don't, stop whining about it. My sympathy is deep and wide, but not for you.

Third, the plot twist was not a twist. Was it supposed to be? Because I guessed who the attractive guy was and who was holding Merete in about the third chapter. It was not a stretch. It was not subtle. Don't try to make this some sort of edge-of-your-seat type thing if you are going to spell out the mystery like this is some sort of elementary school mystery book. I know who did it. All that does is make me even more annoyed that the police can't figure it out.

I will not be reading more of this. Off to cleanse my palate with a reread of Steig Larson.

Los personajes están muy bien creados. Apetece seguir sus historias en el futuro aunque estén llenos de amargura y sin esperanza. ¿Por qué los personajes tienen que estar amargados y ser infelices para que sean atractivos a los lectores? Parece una constante en la mayoría de novelas. En este caso, la vida de Carl Morck es un auténtico desastre.
Lo único que me falla de esta novela es que no me he creído la trama. Demasiado complicada. No quiero desvelar nada, pero no me lo creo.
En general, me ha gustado.

The characters are very well created. You want to follow their stories in the future even if they are full of bitterness and hopelessness. Why do characters have to be bitter and unhappy to be attractive to readers? It seems a constant in most novels. In this case, the life of Carl Morck is a real disaster.
The only thing that fails me about this novel is that I have not believed the plot. Too complicated. I don't want to reveal anything, but I don't believe it.
In general, I liked it.

Perfect✨’

Who is he really?

What’s in the Scandinavian Water? There are so many good mysteries appearing by Scandinavian writers recently. Why are they just now being translated into English? I don’t think I’ve run into a better detective duo than Carl, a policeman of many years experience, and his sidekick Assad, who he supposedly hired to clean the office. Assad says he’s an emigrant from Syria where he used to be a taxi driver but he seems to have skills that not many cabbies could claim. He’s able to get documents examined and deciphered with the help of friends with special skills but no names. And they do it more quickly and accurately than the police department. He uses his charm to get co-worker’s help and allegiance where the cantankerous Carl fails. He notices and remembers things that Carl misses. The funniest parts are when Carl underestimates Assad though it’s understandable because of Assad’s mad skills at coming across as a hapless charmer with a wide toothed grin. It’s a perfect way for him to hide in plain sight. He’s always cheerful, whistling or singing as he scrubs the office and then drops a clue that explodes the case. This book is more about the journey and less about the ending. In fact Adler-Olsen let’s you in on the probable ending right as the story opens but there are many twists and turns along the way that propel you to keep turning pages. In my opinion this is not quite in the category of Larsson’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” but it’s immensely entertaining.

4★
“ ‘Somebody got him to take those drugs, and I know who it was. That’s what I told the police back then.’

Carl pulled out his notebook. ‘Is that right?’ His inner bloodhound raised its head and sniffed at the wind, catching the scent of something unexpected. He was fully alert now. ‘And who might that be?’

Carl Mørck is an outstanding homicide detective in the Copenhagen Police. We heard his boss tell someone so. Unfortunately, he’s also a nuisance to work with, so when the boss gets a directive to start a new Department Q to investigate cold cases, he knows just the man to put in charge. Carl is getting his own office. It is 2007.

“It was true that a brass plate on the door was engraved with the words ‘Department Q’, but the door itself had been lifted off its hinges and was now leaning against a bunch of hot-water pipes that stretched all the way down the long basem*nt corridor. Ten buckets, half filled and giving off paint fumes, still stood inside the room that was supposed to be his office.”

After twenty-five years with the police, Carl had seen a lot of action and thought he could handle anything. But when he and two of his fellow officers were involved in a shooting that killed one of them and paralysed the other, Carl was shaken. Hardy, an unusually tall man, had been hit and fallen on top of Carl, which completely protected Carl from further shots.

When it was all over, he was questioned about why he remained under Hardy rather than get up and fight back. The reason, of course, was that he couldn’t move, but now, he blames himself for not being able to save his friends. Now he is The Keeper of Lost Causes, in charge of his own department. [The alternative title of the book.]

Chapters move between the current day, 2007, and return to 2001, with background on the missing person, attractive Danish politician Merete Lynggaard. She was a darling of the tabloid press, pretty, popular, and mysterious. Nobody could quite work out what her home life was.

We learn that she lost her parents in a horrific car crash, which also damaged her younger brother, Uffe, so badly that he is mute and badly mentally disturbed. In 2002, she disappeared from the ship that she and Uffe were taking on their annual trip to Berlin. The last anyone noticed her, she and Uffe were standing on deck.

The author tells us early that she is somewhere. This is from the first few paragraphs of the prologue:

“She was going to look after herself. For them she was the woman in the cage, but she was the one who decided how far apart the bars would be. She would think thoughts that opened out on to the world and kept madness at bay. They would never break her.”

Carl spends his time down in Dept Q snoozing with his feet on his desk, forgetting he had asked for an assistant.

“His legs were half asleep as he took them down from the desk and stared at the short, dark man standing in front of him. There was no question that he was older than Carl, or that he hadn’t been recruited from the same peasant kingdom that Carl called home.

‘Assad. OK,’ replied Carl sluggishly. But what the hell did this have to do with him?

‘You are Carl Mørck, as it says outside on the door. I must want to help you, they say. Please, is that correct?’

Carl squinted a bit, weighing all the possible interpretations of what the man had just said. Help him?

‘Yeah, I sure as hell hope so,’ was Carl’s reply.”

Now he will have to get to work. No more snoozing. He and Assad make an interesting odd couple, down in the basem*nt, with Assad finding a small spot for his prayer rug, making exotic teas and foods, and generally confusing Carl, while at the same time asking insightful questions that spark Carl into different lines of inquiry.

I enjoyed the police work and the somewhat touchy relationship between Carl and everyone else, but I found Merete’s chapters very hard.

“She looked towards the glass panes and tried to appear calm. ‘Please, have mercy on me,’ she whispered softly into the darkness.”

It’s a long read. It strayed into the beginnings of side stories that seemed to peter out. Carl is repeatedly told to see a counsellor. He keeps refusing - but finds her sexy. Carl is repeatedly instructed to undertake training for a new title. He refuses each time. He has a stepson and a lodger, who come in and out of several scenes but offer very little to the story. I wondered if these are people who will appear again in the series.

But all in all, I enjoyed it and may follow up with this popular series.

I must confess that I'm slowly becoming addicted to this series. After reading The Hanging Girl with thirsty passion, I knew that I needed to hurry back to the library and take out another Jussi Adler-Olsen. "The Keeper of the Lost Causes" is the book that introduces readers to Carl Morck and his assistant Assad.

After dealing with a vicious attack on his team that left one team member dead and the other paralyzed, Carl is returning to the homicide department. However, many of his colleagues and supervisors are not eager to see his return. Conveniently timed is a political ploy to solve more cold cases within the Danish police department. Carl finds himself the new director of "Department Q "and exiled to the basem*nt with a box of unsolved cases.

Soon Carl is given Assad, a political refugee allegedly from Syria. Carl is at first resistant to any type of help,but soon he and Assad find their first intriguing case. The case of a young female politician that either drowned or committed suicide five years ago, but the body was never recovered. While many are quick to say "case closed", Carl sets out convinced that he can solve this case...because she just might still be alive.

I loved grumpy Carl with his chaotic life and especially enjoyed the relationship between Assad and Carl.Pulse pounding action and a very intriguing case make for some exciting reading.

4/5 Estrellas

Ahora si, empezar una serie policiaca por el principio, ayuda a comprender mejor el carácter y las motivaciones de los personajes, aunque en este caso no puede haber personajes más desastrados, más dispares y más caóticos que nuestro subcomisario Carl Morck, jefe del recién creado Departamento Q y su ayudante Hafez el Assad, que de ayudante de limpieza, enviado por la Oficina de Extranjería, se revela como un eficaz ayudante en la investigación, cuyo oscuro pasado de refugiado político, esconde insospechadas habilidades policiacas y de otras índoles que iremos descubriendo a lo largo de los distintos capítulos de la serie....
Nuestro subcomisario, aturdido por los últimos acontecimientos que han sucedido en su vida personal y profesional es "apartado" mediante su nombramiento como jefe del recién creado Departamento Q, donde debe investigar casos antiguos que no han podido ser resueltos, como una especie de último intento antes de ser definitivamente archivados.
Carl no parece estar muy motivado ante el nuevo reto, pero cuando cae en sus manos el caso de una relevante y joven política desaparecida en extrañas circunstancias 5 años antes, poco a poco el gusanillo de la investigación vuelve a picarlo, picazón alimentada por el extraño interés y competencia con que empieza a ayudarlo su "ayudante de limpieza" Assad. Poco a poco lo que parecía un auténtico callejón sin salida empieza a revelar datos interesantes que apuntan a que lo que parecía un simple suicidio, parece estar ligado a una venganza relacionada con un violento suceso del pasado......
La trama es quizá demasiado fantasiosa y poco creíble, pero el autor tiene una habilidad especial para mantener la tensión, incluso cuando casi desde el principio se intuye claramente qué ha pasado, quienes son los verdugos y cuales pueden ser sus motivaciones. Sin embargo los continuos saltos en el tiempo, la tensión del desenlace que se acerca de forma inexorable, la originalidad de la investigación y de los investigadores, consiguen mantener la intriga hasta el final.
Buen libro y muy buena serie policiaca. Seguiré con ella. Una pena la traducción de Maeva, aunque no me ha parecido tan desastrosa como la del cuarto libro de la serie.
Muy Recomendable

Just what a mystery lover needs! Another excellent series discovered. I've heard tell of the Department Q series for some time but never got around to the books. Then my niece happened to give me a copy of the first in the series and I took advantage of a recuperation period post shoulder surgery for a dive into this new world. And it was well worth it.

Carl Mørck is the head of this new department, a bit of a grudging head, since it comes on the heels of a disastrous last homicide case in which one of his close fellow officers was killed, another severely wounded and he luckily survived less severe wounds. He's back to work but unsure of himself and the world. And now he has a new charge--working on cold cases, selecting what he wants to do from a pile available to him, working alone. Well sort of alone in his basem*nt office except for this strange fellow Assad, who is quite literally a jack of all trades.

The plot here follows two threads, one following the cold case from its inception, and the second following the new investigation as well as Carl's life and attempts to work out all that has happened to him. I grew to like all of the characters quite a bit (except for an obvious few) and appreciate the author's skill at character development as well as his ability to eke out those small details of a criminal case that can make all the difference.

I very definitely recommend this book to all, like myself, who haven't yet discovered it, and I plan to continue with the second book as soon as possible.

An excellent detective story, but much more. Fascinating characters, far from perfect, far from fully disclosed even by book's end. A somewhat improbable plot, but still imaginable, disclosed in bits and pieces that created the needed tension. Overall, a fine read and incentive to read more by this author.

This longish Nordic thriller/mystery delivers a very satisfying read, for the most part. I sometimes wondered if the translation to English added more words. The lead character is the world-weary but brilliant detective Carl Morck who gets relegated to a basem*nt office (Department Q) where he's given one offbeat assistant, Assad. The funny and personable interactions between Carl and Assad are the most interesting parts of the cop narrative. The main plot of the top Danish government official's kidnapping which they're trying to solve is serviceable enough. The suspense builds well, and the pacing is solid. I haven't read further into the series, but I suspect Carl and Assad will collude again to crack other major cases. Enjoyable and diverting, just like I want from readying crime genre fiction.

Un excelent roman politist, care face parte din seria "Departamentul Q". Este chiar primul si astfel am si eu norocul de a le citi in ordinea care trebuie.
"Kvinden i buret" il are in prim plan pe detectivul Carl Morck, un personaj atipic, indolent, cinic si foarte amuzant, care mi-a adus aminte de detectivul meu Marlow din "Vremea Justitiarului". :)
Cand nu se afla la sediul politiei din Danemarca, unde nimeni nu-l place, acesta locuieste intr-o casa impreuna cu fiul sau vitreg, Jesper, care asculta heavy metal dat la maxim la etaj. Chiriasul sau care locuieste la subsol asculta in schimb opera, data si ea la maxim. Carl, situandu-se la mijloc este nevoit sa indure mixajul dintre aceste doua genuri (care teoretic nu poate fi ceva rau). Daca da cu piciorul in podea, Rigoletto de la subsol inceteaza. La etaj insa, nu merge atat de usor cu fiul sau, pe care trebuie sa-l ameninte chiar si cu taierea cablului de la internet. Sincera sa fiu mi-ar placea sa traiesc intr-o asem*nea casa.
In ceea ce priveste serviciul sau, dupa o trauma in care si-a pierdut un coleg si celalalt a ramas paralizat, sefii lui Carl incearca sa se descotoroseasca de el si infiinteaza Departamentul Q, special pentru a-l "ingropa" acolo. Acesta se va ocupa de cazuri clasate, asa cum este si cel al frumoasei deputate Merete, care este rapita si tinuta intr-o camera presurizata vreme de 5 ani. Singura ei sansa o reprezinta controversatul detectiv si noul sau partener, care nu este nici macar politist dar care are toate calitatile unuia.
Romanul este foarte distractiv, bine scris, cu capitole scurte, usor de citit, concentrat pe actiune si ancheta, printre care sunt inserate si cateva secvente pline de umor sau cate o replica amuzanta a detectivului care mai destind din atmosfera incordata si serioasa a unui caz. Mi-au placut referirile la ouale Kinder, figurinele Star Wars si Testoasele Ninja.
Ca o mica paranteza, as dori sa amintesc de camerele de evadare (asa numitele escape rooms) care au devenit foarte populare si care se gasesc chiar si in tara noastra. Acestea ofera experiente incitante, pline de adrenalina si uneori foarte realiste. Sunt camere tematice, concepute ca o serie de puzzle-uri si task-uri care trebuiesc rezolvate intr-un anumit timp pentru a reusi evadarea sau elucidarea unei enigme. Pretul insa poate constitui un real dezavantaj iar dupa un timp poti sa devii dependent de aceasta adrenalina si de dorinta de a evada din cat mai multe. Personal, am fost in majoritatea camerelor cu tematica horror si va pot recomanda "Coven" sau "Jigsaw Puzzle". Merita sa incercati macar o data o aventura de genul.
In incheiere, am selectat cateva citate amuzante si ironice menite sa ne binedispuna, majoritatea apartinand detectivului iesit din comun al cartii:
"Sufrageria era de genul celor prezentate in filmele cu dezastre, dupa ce o cometa despica Pamantul in doua."
"Doar pentru ca cineva e un ratat, nu inseamna ca nu are coloana vertebrala. Uita-te la tine, de exemplu."
"Isi cunostea limitele. A doua zi dimineata avea sa-si simta capul atat de mare si de sensibil precum ego-ul unui prim-ministru."
"- Daca munca ta de anchetator e la fel de bleaga ca si ce-ai intre picioare, poti sa pleci acum, se rasti ea.
- Continuam, sau mai ai ceva de comentat in legatura cu partile mele nobile?"
"... Facea comentarii cu privire la raportul pe care ecologistul Bjarke Onfelt, un tip sceptic si increzut, il inaintase Comitetului Deceptiilor Stiintei. Ce nume pentru un comitet, isi spuse Carl. Si cand te gandesti ca orice din Danemarca ar putea suna atat de kafkian..."

I have had this book forever, but for some reason was never drawn to pick it up and read it. In order to complete a reading challenge, I did finally get to it and WOW!
This is a Danish book (Scandinavian noir) translated into English. Carl Mørck is a police officer that is jaded due to an incident that killed one of his team and permanently disabled another. He feels responsible and hates everyone around him. Having become a thorn in the side of his fellow officers an opportunity arises to move him aside. So Department Q is created and Mørck is tasked with reviewing cold cases.
After something of a slow start the book takes off and a heart pounding thriller emerges. I can highly recommend this book that is a nail-biter yet still told with wonderful humour and it also manages to draw tears with some emotional observations.
I am sure this will appeal to anyone who has enjoyed Jo Nesbø's Hole series.

PS this is also available through Amazon - retitled as 'Mercy'

This was my April Book Pal's choice and it was a good one! I really enjoyed this book! Carl and Assad are a great pair. Assad is a character I want to know more about. I liked that part of the story was told from Merete's point of view. This was my first book by Jussi Adler-Olsen and I'm looking forward to more.

3stars....a good enough danish detective debut....interesting characters and mystery BUT weighed down by predictability and waaaaaay too many cliches...I will try the second in the series at some point.

This one was an unexpectedly fabulous read. I went into it thinking it'd be just one more moody, scandinavian mystery. And it was to some extent. But it was also a suspenseful, sometimes dryly funny effort. And Carl Morck as protagonist was highly appealing.

Carl is a detective with the Copenhagen police. He's returned to work after a shooting that left his partner paralyzed and another colleague dead. Where once he was a hard-charging investigator, now he is having a hard time caring about anything. What's the point? What once were minor irritations bug the crap out of him and it shows. None of his colleagues want to work with him on anything. And his boss, Marcus, is at wits end. He can't fire Carl (becaue of the union and because Carl was injured) but he doesn't want him in the squad anymore either. When the government decides to fund a nationwide cold-case investigation unit that will be based out of Copenhagen, Marcus decides to "promote" Carl to a new position as the head of Department Q - while managing to keep most of government appropriated funds for his homicide dept.

Carl finds himself in a basem*nt office with a stack of files he doesn't intend to touch. That intention is put aside when his new assistant, hired at Carl's insistence as someone to keep the basem*nt office clean, shows an interest in the caseload and prods Carl into action. Assad is a Syrian with a sketchy command of the Danish language. But he also proves to be smart and capable. Soon the two men are caught up in the case of a missing elected member of the government, Merete Lynggard. Merete disappeared from a ferry five years ago and was presumed drowned somewhere between Denmark and Germany. But her body never surfaced and as Carl reluctantly investigates he realizes that much was missed in the early investigation.

The author intersperces Carl's investigation with chapters that describe the captivity of an unknown woman. It's not hard to guess who she is, but guessing whether Carl will find her or not is another thing. I was feeling so tense about her fate that I was tempted to peek at the end to see how it came out. I managed to hold myself back and am happy that I did so because it made the reading that much better - whatever the outcome.

Reading as Carl re-emerges as the very competent police detective he'd once been and his interactions with the very interesting Assad (which were often funny) was a delight. If I have one quibble it is that some of the supporting cast felt a little sketched in and not as believable as the stars. I'm hoping that further installments in the series will allow them to be fleshed out a bit.

When you start the first page of ‘The Keeper of Lost Causes’, start the first bag of microwave popcorn to cook. By the time the second bag of popcorn is ready to eat, this book is finally ready to entertain. It starts slow.

Carl Morck is a good detective, but he no longer has people skills currently, in 2007, not that that was his personal strength in the first place. Instead, he possesses most an intuitive ability combined with a dogged methodology in the art of detecting, honed by 25 years on the Copenhagen police force, with 10 years in Homicide.

Homicide Chief Marcus Jacobsen, his boss, is, fortunately, still supportive of his surly rude misogynist employee, who survived a deadly ambush; and Jacobsen protects Morck even as he tries to isolate him from his peers and superiors.

As the book opens, Jacobsen has the rest of his staff working on the murder of a cyclist, but he has bumped Morck into upper management of a sort, a promotion, as the new head of a new department, Department Q, dedicated to ‘special cases’, including old unsolved ones. Morck is not happy with his promotion, and he decides to spend his days sleeping at his desk, feet propped up on the stacks of old case files.

Morck is even more unhappy when he is assigned an energetic Muslim assistant and driver, Hafez el-Ahmed, an immigrant from Syria with a mysterious past. However, Morck discovers he can still feel something when he is shamed by Ahmed’s superior work ethic and energy. When Ahmed suggests exploring the disappearance of Lynggard almost 5 years earlier, Morck finally begins an investigation.

Merete Lynggaard, vice-chairperson of the Democrats and frequent speaker in the Danish Parliament, was a darling of the media in 2002. However, although beautiful, talented and sharp-witted, she had sorrows which she kept hidden. Her family had been destroyed by a car accident in which she was a contributing factor. She had been tussling with her younger brother Uffe in the back seat, causing a deadly distraction for her beloved father, driving the family car. Unfortunately, the accident involved another family out for a drive as well, so her guilt was magnified. Her past had given Merete a deepened seriousness, along with a imparting to her a reluctance for commitments except that for politics. In her chosen work, however, she was respected and popular.

But not everyone must have loved her. A psychopath kidnapped her in 2002 and locked her into a cell for as long as she as lives. He has kept her alive for five years so far. He has decided on a suitable ending which he plans to set in motion - eventually. As far as he is concerned, justice is being served. As far as the world knows, she disappeared almost 5 years ago under mysterious circ*mstances while traveling on a ferry. Did she fall off of the boat, or was she pushed? Department Q decides to find out.

This book becomes, eventually, a fun genre read. It gradually grows in energy, mystery and entertainment.

Below I have included part of my GR profile ‘About me’ :

“My ratings are about my feelings as well as writing merit. I do not judge writing by whether all the commas are in the right place, or how many literary allusions are in the plot. I can and will rate a bad potboiler five stars if I stay up all night to finish it. For most genre novels my ratings have more to do with entertainment value first, plot consistency second, literary value third. For literary novels, I reverse that order. Non-fiction books I judge by their architecture, writing, and facts.

Most books of fiction have plot holes one can drive a truck through. If I didn't emphasize the emotion over logic, my reviews would be excessively curmudgeon. I also choose to ignore plot deficits if the writing is superb. It helps that I enjoy low culture very much. Highbrow literature, even when excellent, often bores me with its cold glitter.”

So, now you know, gentle reader, why I assigned this novel 4 stars despite the too slow start and plot holes!

The Danish author writes originally in Danish, and I am an English-speaking reader, thus this is a translated book for me. As usual with translations, there is a clunky English-language stiffness in some of the sentences, especially in the early chapters, but it was not too distracting.

I think the story builds a tad too slow as it takes its time setting up characterization and back story for the protagonists. Carl Morck, our series hero, is not a police detective I liked very much, either, but for a man who had survived a devastating ambush which killed several of his fellow detectives, I think he was painted quite accurately as to the emotional damage some survivors experience in the aftermath of the death of friends. His partner, Ahmed, has all of the charm Carl lacks.

The author Jussi Adler-Olsen does establish vivid and interesting characters which I assume the series will be exploring in future novels, while introducing in alternative chapters - and years - the mystery that is at the heart of this book (the plot switches between 2002 and 2007). It takes a long time for the two plots to intersect, but when it does, the book becomes impossible to set down because even though I guessed who was behind the kidnapping by the middle of the story, it has a VERY thrilling conclusion! .