As close to perfect as a mystery can get, this award-winning novel by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen provides an exciting and unique plot, and characters with whom the reader will identify. The novel is complex but not impossible to follow, and it is also genuinely heart-breaking in places without being sentimental. Warm and often very funny, it is also serious since Adler-Olsen creates an underlying thematic structure which gives a powerful kick as the novel comes to its conclusion.
Copenhagen Police Detective Carl Morck is an emotional mess. One of his partners was killed in a recent incident in which Morck was shot, and the other now lies hospitalized, paralyzed from the neck down. Described even on a good day as "lazy, surly, morose, always bitching, and [constantly] treating his colleagues like crap," Morck, upon his reluctant return to work, has not been welcomed back by anyone. When a new department, called Department Q, is created to work on "cases deserving special scrutiny," especially unsolved cases, the Chief of Homicide appoints Morck to run the one-man department--from the musty basement of the station.
His assistant is the ingenuous and charming, Hafez el-Assad, from Syria, who surreptitiously begins to investigate on his own. As time goes on, and Assad magically pries out information from the grumpiest of the secretaries "upstairs," he often yields remarkable new insights, eventually reawakening the professional curiosity of Carl Morck. Front and center is the case of Merete Lynggaard, vice-chairperson of the Social Democratic party, who was accompanying her mute and handicapped brother on a ferry when she suddenly vanished. After nearly five years, no trace of her has ever been found, and her brother, institutionalized, remains mute.
Alternating with Morck's point of view is that of a missing woman, imprisoned in a pressurized room by someone she has never seen. As Assad keeps using his mysterious talents to ferret out information to help Morck, the Lynggaard case becomes ever more complicated, and since Morck is still dealing with post-traumatic stress and guilt from the shooting, the reader looks forward to the scenes in which Assad, ingenuously, keeps asking questions of Morck, adding a light touch to what would otherwise be a grim and grisly plot involving the torturers of the unfortunate prisoner.
Assad is both heroic and a naďve, serving as a contrast to the personal misery of the other characters, misery which is imposed on them, not by fate, but by other people. Accidents and, essentially, the rolls of the dice mean the difference between escape from disaster and death, permanent disabilities, psychological traumas, and unexpected changes. There are, however, questions about Assad's own background, and his story will probably be featured in the remaining three (so far) novels in this series, not yet translated into English.
As the author examines the various aspects of power which permanently affect all people, he raises questions about government, policing, and man's expectations--and whether man should, in fact, have any expectations at all. When faced with pressures from those whose power is vastly superior to one's own, how far can someone go to protect his own integrity before caving in to power? Do those in power have ethical and moral obligations toward those they are serving? Though the answers may seem obvious, issues of everyday survival make absolute conclusions less assured. Mary Whipple
(Note: This novel is known in the UK as MERCY.)
