The Absent One

Starred review from June 18, 2012
Adler-Olsen, Denmark’s leading crime fiction author, outdoes his outstanding debut, Keeper of Lost Causes, with his second Department Q novel. No one knows how prickly Copenhagen Deputy Det. Supt. Carl Morck, the head of Department Q, which handles cold cases, received the file about the 1987 murder of an 18-year-old brother and a 17-year-old sister in a summer cottage. At the time suspicion fell on six boarding-school friends, but the police could find no evidence. Nine years later, a member of that group, the only one who had been on scholarship, confessed and went to prison. Morck and his misfit assistants, Assad and Rose, discover that the blood lust of those same students, now wealthy leaders of society, has not abated. These men fear only one thing—a homeless woman who used to be part of their gang. An insightful look at ruthless people seduced by violence and hiding behind their wealth fuels the surprise-filled plot. Morck’s life is never simple, whether it involves office politics, stymied investigations, or guilt over his paralyzed partner. Agent: Sarah Hunt Cooke, international rights director at Penguin UK.

August 1, 2012
Copenhagen Deputy Detective Superintendent Carl Morck 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 Dybbol 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 Rodovre High School along with Kristian Wolf, Bjarne Thogersen 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 Jorgeneon and her brother Soren 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 Jorgensens' 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.

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July 1, 2012
Grumpy Copenhagen police detective Carl Mrck 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 casealthough his uneasy partnership with the genial Assad has been complicated by the transfer of a difficult second assistant named Rose. A file lands on Mrck's desk and leads him to a group of industry titans who may have been getting away with murderliterallysince 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 Mrck'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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)