Review by New York Times Review
As she managed to do so well in her first novel, "Black Water Rising," Locke draws on the past to remind her characters how much it has shaped their identities and how much it continues to shape the choices they make. The de facto historian at Belle Vie is Caren Gray, who grew up there as the daughter of a plantation cook and has been this tourist attraction's general manager ever since she and her 9-year-old daughter left New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Although Caren is almost frighteningly self-possessed, her sang-froid is shaken when she stumbles over the body of a murdered migrant worker employed by the giant sugarcane operation adjacent to Belle Vie. The police are quick to suspect Donovan Isaacs, a member of the troupe of actors who perform a scripted re-enactment of the plantation's role in the Civil War. In coming to Donovan's defense, Caren is startled to discover that this young firebrand - entrusted with such deathless dialogue as: "Dem Yankee whites can't make me leave dis here land. Dis here mah home. Freedom weren't meant nothing without Belle Vie" - recently quit school to film his own corrective version of local history. For a character so smart and so appealing, Caren is astonishingly dense about a lot of things that are going on behind her back. Even more astounding is her disinclination to follow up on the shocking revelations that bring the mystery to a close. But if the schematic plot and dangling resolution speak badly for Locke's construction values, the language of her storytelling is sturdy and absorbing. Who can resist the opening scene of a wedding in which a cottonmouth "measuring the length of a Cadillac" falls from a live oak into the lap of the bride's future mother-in-law, then is brushed away with the observation that "it only briefly stopped the ceremony, this being Louisiana after all." Scandinavian sadism, which took a nose dive after the untimely death of Stieg Larsson, perked up when the Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen muscled onto the scene with "The Keeper of Lost Causes," which devised a special cold-case division called Department Q for a maverick homicide cop named Carl Morck. Although relegated to the basement and presented with a Syrian maintenance man as an assistant, Morck managed to find a female politician who had been kept captive and starved for five years. Morck and his colleague, Assad, are still in the basement in THE ABSENT ONE (Dutton, $26.95), but they've been joined by Rose Knudsen, a gifted researcher who never made it out of the police academy but proves invaluable on an investigation involving a group of Copenhagen millionaires who get erotic thrills from tracking and killing exotic animals. Adler-Olsen may lack Larsson's political passion, but he brings great inventiveness to descriptions of the techniques of torture, which keeps the sadistic brutality from becoming repetitive or even (God help us) dull. There's nothing shameful about love, so no reader should feel embarrassed about mourning the loss of a beloved sleuth like Marshal Guarnaccia, the kindly detective who figured in the Florentine mysteries of Magdalen Nabb, who died in 2007. But Florence is still in good hands, entrusted to a private investigator named Sandro Cellini, who keeps a wary eye on the ancient city in a string of mysteries by Christobel Kent. It took me a while to catch up with the "impatient, irascible, impetuous" Cellini, who is more temperamentally akin to Aurelio Zen, the detective in Michael Dibdin's politically charged mysteries. THE DEAD SEASON (Pegasus, $25.95) isn't the first book in this series, but it's a terrific introduction to the intractable problems of a modern-day city plagued by illegal immigrants, an exhausted economy and a broken system of government. Call them what she will, Laura Lippman's out-of-series "mysteries" tend to be extended character studies of interesting women caught up in unusual circumstances that can get a little dicey without posing a convincing threat to life, limb or personal happiness. AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD (Morrow/HarperCollins, $26.99) runs true to form, but as usual, the circumstances are so extraordinary that the absence of tension tends to be forgotten - if not forgiven. Heloise Lewis, the heroine of Lippman's latest nota-mystery, is a single mother with an 11-year-old son who keeps an extremely low profile in her suburban Maryland community. She calls herself a "socially progressive libertarian," lobbies on behalf of underemployed women and belongs to an unorthodox, and highly entertaining, church. But behind the scenes, Heloise is actually the madam of a high-priced call girl operation that requires an authorial struggle to turn into something capable of attracting a serious criminal element. Without taking away from the nice character profiling, Lippman's effort falls flatter than Heloise's attempt to play at being a soccer mom. Attica Locke's mystery opens with a snake falling into the lap of the brides future mother-in-law.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 7, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
Grumpy Copenhagen police detective Carl Morck finds that Department Q, the cold-case Siberia to which he was exiled in The Keeper of Lost Causes (2011), has become a little less chilly since he cracked the famous Lynggaard case although his uneasy partnership with the genial Assad has been complicated by the transfer of a difficult second assistant named Rose. A file lands on Morck's desk and leads him to a group of industry titans who may have been getting away with murder literally since their days at an elite boarding school. Adler-Olsen riffs on inequality in Danish society, which is timely, although the predations of the bad guys are so over the top that they teeter on the edge of parody. And while Morck's guilty feelings over his old partner's injury gave depth to the first book, they're treated cursorily here. Most memorable is the portrait of Kimmie, the absent one of the title, a damaged but deadly cipher who has fallen out with the group. She's no Salander, but she's almost as original. Less riveting than the first one, but worthwhile for fans.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Adler-Olsen's latest installment of his Department Q series, Copenhagen detective Carl Morck is drawn into a case that will reveal the darkest sides of the privileged, the depraved, and the dispossessed. Returning from vacation, Morck is tasked with investigating a previously closed case: the brutal murder of a brother and sister in 1987. In resurrecting the old case, the detective investigates a group of individuals-now successful and influential-who attended boarding school together at the time of the murders. Morck's sleuthing soon leads him to Kimmie, a woman who harbors dark secrets that could change the lives of her former classmates forever. In this audio edition, narrator Steven Pacey ably brings Adler-Olsen's intricate mystery to life. He lends the characters-the perpetually cranky Morck, his eager-to-please assistant Assad, or the damaged Kimmie-distinct and absolutely spot-on voices. A Dutton hardcover. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the second installation of his "Department Q" novels, Adler-Olsen (The Keeper of Lost Causes) brings Det. Carl Morck out of the basement and back onto the streets of Copenhagen. Twenty years ago, a brother and sister were sadistically tortured and murdered in their family's cabin. The original suspects (boarding school gang members) are from highly influential and wealthy families, most of whom have grown into elite and untouchable millionaires. After being turned on aggressively by the others, Kimmie, the only female of the group, has gone off the radar and threatens all that the men hold dear-and Morck is on a mission to find her, no matter the odds. Verdict Adler-Olsen has created a wonderful addition to the detective fiction genre in his sleuth. Morck is a tenacious, hard-hitting force who can't be diverted from his case. Readers of detective fiction, international crime fiction, and suspense fiction will highly enjoy this thriller. While the book can be read as a stand-alone novel, readers will be unable to resist seeking out and devouring the first and subsequent series titles.-Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Copenhagen Deputy Detective Superintendent Carl Mrck returns from vacation to discover that his tiny cold case unit, Department Q, has been reshuffled, and a citizen's complaint has reopened a 20-year-old case on which all the relevant documents have disappeared. Ditlev Pram is a founder of private hospitals. Ulrik Dybbl Jensen is a stock market analyst. Torsten Florin is a prominent designer. Before they achieved their success, however, they were fifth-form students together at Rdovre High School along with Kristian Wolf, Bjarne Thgersen and Kirsten-Marie Lassen. These last three haven't done so well. Kristian died in an apparent hunting accident; Bjarne is doing time for killing Lisbet Jrgeneon and her brother Sren back in 1987; and Kimmie is living on the streets of Copenhagen. Now new evidence suggests that all six of them were responsible for the Jrgensens' deaths and for a whole lot more mayhem as well. The upshot of Carl's dogged investigation is to get himself suspended from the force. But aided and abetted by his loyal Syrian assistant, Hafez el-Assad, and his new secretary, Rose Knudsen, assigned to his unit after she failed her police driving test, he continues to build a case against his influential quarry, themselves desperate to track down Kimmie, whose voices have been telling her that it's time to get revenge on them for their mistreatment of her. The long, eventful, often tedious chase climaxes in a wild hunt guaranteed to satisfy the most bloodthirsty readers. As in Department Q's debut (The Keeper of Lost Causes, 2011), Adler-Olsen plots and writes with both eyes on Stieg You-Know-Who. The result is overscaled, lumpy, strenuously unnuanced and destined for the bestseller lists.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
