I was about halfway through The Keeper of Lost Causes and wondering why I was enjoying it. Everything about it is good, not great, from the misanthropic detective, to the unlikely sidekick, to the mystery itself. It kept landing with me and it took me a while to figure out why…
It’s a recognizable story.
I never went through anything as horrible as the fictional Carl Mørck did but I do know what it’s like to be screwed over by your superiors, blamed for things that aren’t your fault, and threatened by a lack of job security. I’m not a misanthrope like Mørck is — at least I don’t fancy myself to be — but I found a lot of my story in his story.
And that’s what really made this thing hum: Mørck isn’t Sherlock Holmes, he’s not a super-detective. These aren’t the blandly-competent-police-work-doubling as-social-commentary tales of the Martin Beck series. No, it’s just a guy who, while indeed being screwed over after a traumatic event, is an entertaining jerk and does some good shoe leather police work to solve a cold case.
I’m not sure I liked Carl Mørck but like ain’t got nothing to do with it when it comes to my reading habits. I was thoroughly entertained by Carl Mørck’s story, his trajectory, his ridiculous nature. Also, while I usually hate women-in-distress tales, I thought Jussi Adler-Olson did a good job at fleshing out the story of the female victim, in all her tragedies and imperfections.
It still suffers from some first book stagnancy but I will definitely be picking up book two soon and checking out the Netflix series.