The Alphabet House

November 24, 2014
First published in Denmark in 1997, Adler-Olsen’s debut is a very different sort of thriller from his Department Q series (The Marco Effect, etc.): it recounts the harrowing odyssey of two British airmen shot down behind enemy lines during WWII and subsequently held captive, under assumed German identities, in a hellish mental hospital for SS officers. Only one of the two can actually speak German, and their struggle to survive electroshock therapy, experimental drugs, and brutal treatment from staff and fellow inmates makes the first half of the book punishing reading. A long-deferred day of reckoning arrives for several characters some 30 years later during the ill-fated 1972 Munich Olympics. Although the daring (if far-fetched) plot, sustained suspense, and caustic view of society all hint at the author’s later work, this meticulously researched historical journey won’t be to every taste.

December 15, 2014
Adler-Olsen (The Marco Effect, 2014, etc.) begins his first stand-alone thriller with a World War II reconnaissance mission. During the flight, RAF pilots James Teasdale and Bryan Young, boyhood friends, are shot down. They avoid capture, slipping aboard an eastern front ambulance train, tossing two wounded Germans from a rail car and assuming their identities. Unknowingly, they now are assumed to be elite SS troopers with battle fatigue. While "[a]n SS officer could not be brought home insane"-"normally there was...an injection and a coffin"-the Nazis secretly hospitalized the more important ones. Tense and claustrophobic, the narrative finds James and Bryan confined with and harassed by three sadistic malingerers: Kroner, an "enormous, gnarled figure [with a] pockmarked face"; Lankau, a "broad-faced monster"; and Stich, their puppeteer. James is silenced by shock therapy and medication. Bryan resists and escapes. Home in England, he grows rich as a physician and inventor, but in 1972, a chance encounter reignites unsettled memories, even though "his bad conscience had lost intensity." He decides to return to Freiburg to learn James' fate, though his friend is supposedly dead because the Allies had "wiped out that viper's nest." Postwar, however, the three SS officers, rich on loot, secreted James in an institution; this is a weaker plot element, given the SS's sociopathic evil. The novel then chronicles bloody, violent confrontations between Bryan and the former Nazis. While handling the conflict between loyalty and survival with nuance and depth, Adler-Olsen's early battle scene isn't as realistic or frightening as the story of the pair's hospitalization. Nevertheless, he has a solid grip on settings, more so in Germany than England, and the complex tale unfolds with plausibly ambiguous emotions as Bryan discovers "[e]ach element had played its essential role in one magnificent lie." A study of loyalty confronting madness and evil.

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Starred review from December 15, 2014
Finally released for English-speaking readers, Adler-Olsen's first thriller (originally published in 1997) shares the finely detailed characterization and taut atmosphere of his Department Q series (The Marco Effect, 2014). Best friends Bryan Young and James Teasdale entered the RAF together, partnering on an impressive number of raids behind Nazi lines until they are shot down over Germany. They barely escape enemy soldiers by jumping aboard a passing hospital train transporting SS officers. Bryan and James quickly dispatch two patients, assume their identities, and are transported to a bleak mental ward called the Alphabet House (named for the lettered codes Nazis assigned disabilities). Desperate to conceal their sanity, they submit to brutal experimental electroshock treatments, debilitating medications, and the torment of another group of malingerers who are convinced that Bryan and James threaten their plans for postwar riches. Planning an escape while maintaining their facade is virtually impossible. Then one night's desperate action results in murder and a 30-year battle against the legacy of their stay at the Alphabet House. Adler-Olsen meticulously constructs the Alphabet House, layering hospital routines, mental-health treatments, and the stomach-turning evils of Nazi culture to create a pitch-perfect thriller atmosphere. Woven into the steady flow of action, the extent of the Alphabet House's damage to Bryan and James' friendship and futures is unveiled, shadowing the story with regret.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2014

He's the Danish crime king, departing from the Department Q series (e.g., The Purity of Vengeance) with a stand-alone published earlier in Denmark. Shot down over World War II Germany, British pilots James Teasdale and Bryan Young evade escape by hopping a train carrying senior SS soldiers wounded on the eastern front. That lands them at a scary mental hospital called the Alphabet House.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014

In January 1944, British pilots James Teasdale and Bryan Young, on a reconnaissance mission near Dresden, Germany, are shot down and escape capture by leaping aboard a train reserved for wounded SS men. Their convincing disguise as German soldiers gets them transferred to Alphabet House, a mental hospital near Freiberg. Staying silent and simulating madness, James and Bryan receive electroshock therapy and experimental drugs. Bryan soon learns how to hide his pills, as well as retain his physical and psychological stamina, while James slowly fades into oblivion. After ten months of plotting, Bryan finally escapes. Thirty years later, Bryan has secured a profitable professional career. James's life remains empty and defeated. Their friendship, too, has been marked by betrayal and abandonment. VERDICT Published for the first time in the United States, crime writer Adler-Olsen's (The Keeper of Lost Causes) 1997 debut was inspired by the experience of the author's father as a senior consultant in psychiatry at numerous mental hospitals in Denmark. But the extensive details of life in an asylum, where playing mental charades was not uncommon during the war, bog down the book's first half. Furthermore, the narrative doesn't introduce enough interaction between Bryan and James at the beginning to convince readers of the special friendship upon which the entire story is based. [See Prepub Alert, 8/18/14.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.