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.

November 26, 2012
In Adler-Olsen’s latest installment of his Department Q series, Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck is drawn into a case that will reveal the darkest sides of the privileged, the depraved, and the dispossessed. Returning from vacation, Mørck 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. Mørck’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 Mørck, his eager-to-please assistant Assad, or the damaged Kimmie—distinct and absolutely spot-on voices. A Dutton hardcover.

Carl M¿rck of Copenhagen's cold case Department Q wonders who has dropped the closed case of a pair of long-ago thrill killings on his desk. The murders were fomented by a clique of spoiled boarding school students, one of whom confessed and is serving time. The rest have grown rich and influential and highly motivated to keep the case ice-cold, but there is an absent member of their group unaccounted for: Kimmie, the only girl, now living on the streets, completely ruined and completely dangerous. With his vivid vocal portraits, Steven Pacey builds a complex world from gated country estate to junkie flophouse while maintaining a heart-pounding momentum. His doomed street urchin, Rat Tina, will haunt you, but then the whole gripping puzzle will. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine