4thace reviewed The absent one by Jussi Adler-Olsen (A Department Q novel)
A thriller with unsavory elements I didn't like
3 stars
This is a story of a group of Danish boarding school students who get away with acts of torture and murder for decades before the heroes in the police force notice a pattern in unsolved cases. The reader knows who the culprits are early on, so this isn't really a mystery but more of a thriller. It is pretty clear that comeuppance is soon arriving once the police investigation gains traction but the suspense lies in seeing when and how that happens. In the process the author reveals what led the delinquents to commit their antisocial sprees.
This was a tough audiobook for me to get through. It's been a long time since I read the first book in the series and maybe I forgot about how much graphic violence featured in this kind of story. In the first book I remembered and appreciated the humor, the glimpses of …
This is a story of a group of Danish boarding school students who get away with acts of torture and murder for decades before the heroes in the police force notice a pattern in unsolved cases. The reader knows who the culprits are early on, so this isn't really a mystery but more of a thriller. It is pretty clear that comeuppance is soon arriving once the police investigation gains traction but the suspense lies in seeing when and how that happens. In the process the author reveals what led the delinquents to commit their antisocial sprees.
This was a tough audiobook for me to get through. It's been a long time since I read the first book in the series and maybe I forgot about how much graphic violence featured in this kind of story. In the first book I remembered and appreciated the humor, the glimpses of Danish life, and the sentimental sections designed to tug at the reader's heartstrings. But there were so many triggering elements here - sexual violence, animal cruelty, racist speech and actions, explicit violence - these would have kept me from picking this up if I had known about them. Aside from the one big antihero, the bad guys were all pretty static and one-dimensional without redeeming qualities. The book takes its mood from the genre of Scandinavian crime thrillers that it typifies. Fans of this subgenre buy in to the lurid outrage,I guess, and maybe don't need to be sold on the pathos as us outsiders do.
The audiobook is narrated by Steven Pacey, who does a good job acting out the various vocal parts. I liked how his performance varied as the sense of urgency ebbed and flowed.