Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: green cover. See photo.
I’ve had some major life changes this year; mostly good, some not so good. As a result, I’m not only behind on my reading but I’m not cataloging here like I usually do. Maybe at some point, I’ll do a series of posts on the books I’ve read this year that I just didn’t have time or energy to write about.
I lift this up because I’ve been diving through the Department Q series thanks to the Netflix show. This is book four of…I think 9? And Jussi-Adler Olsen is still cranking them out.
I haven’t done a lot of Scandi-noir in my life. It’s not my favorite by a long shot; I find it too grim, too brutal, and often gratuitously so. But this series continues to work for me — and this might be the best of it — because of how much the writer cares about his characters, both the detectives and the ones involved with the crimes. I do wish the crimes didn’t often involve abused and/or murdered women and/or children but I get it.
I also think Adler-Olsen — while still writing Carl Morck to be a bigot himself — does a good job of talking about how the undercurrent of patriarchal violence is so prevalent in society and its legitimized through politics and religion. I keep thinking of that now with the Epstein files putting a dent in Trump’s presidency, despite his own court-affirmed crimes against women. What we give grace to and what we do not matters and that Adler-Olsen takes theocratic misogyny seriously makes for both a painful read and, at this moment, a welcome one.