The Keeper of Lost Causes

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Keeper of Lost Causes. New York: Dutton. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

 

She scratched her fingertips on the smooth walls until they bled, and pounded her fists on the thick panes until she could no longer feel her hands. At least ten times she had fumbled her way to the steel door and stuck her fingernails in the crack to try to pry it open, but the door could not be budged, and the edge was sharp. 

Description:

I'll start this book recommendation with a caveat: This book is not for everyone.  Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes is a Scandanavian noir thriller, full of exciting action, fascinating characters, and can-put-down writing style. But like other books in this genre, it depicts some shocking plotlines, stomach-churing situations and pccasionally graphic violence. So, if this type of reading is off-putting to you, stop reading now and move on to another book.

However, if you are drawn to police procedurals, gripping writing, Scandanavian settings, and flawed, complex  characters (both good and evil), then Adler-Olsen is your author. The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first of his ten novels in the Department Q series featuring the Copenhagen homicide police division assigned to take on unsolved murder and missing person cases.

It's a hopeless assignment for Carl Morck, the abrasive detective who, since no one in the Homicide force could get along with him, is kicked downstairs to to tiny basement office and a one-person staff named Assad. Carl is prepared to nap and quietly avoid any work until the five-year-old missing person case of Magete Lynggard is randomly selected to appease his boss that he is actually working on something.

Magete was traveling with her younger brother, a mute, damaged young man who, along with Magete, had survived a terrible car crash that killed their parents and several other people. When her ferry was unloading, Magete's car was left untouched and she was nowhere to be found. Because she was a noted political figure, news interest in her spiked for awhile until it was concluded that probably she had either fallen overboard or committed suicide.

But as we read in the opening paragraph, she is very much alive, but trapped in a hopelessly impenetrable prison, in complete darkness, with only an occasional voice over a PA system to fill the silence. Why she is there and what her outcome will be are a mystery until the final pages.

What drives this book and others in the Department Q series are the characters. Detective Morck has become deeply uninterested in his job after an unexpected shoot-out where one of his partners was killed and another paralized by a stray bullet. Assad, Morck's assistant, slowly shows special talents that take him away from his copying, filing, and cleaning jobs to providing valuable insight and help with the Lynggard investigation. Then there are themembers of the homicide division: some brilliant, many incompetent, all of them to be avoided by Morck at all costs.

This is a book that is impossible to put down. I read it during every spare moment, and late into the night, always regretting whenever I had to stop. It is thrilling on every page, providing questions and, little by little, possible answers as Carl begins to peel away confusing layers of this long-dead case.

Highest recommendation for lovers of thrillers, procedurals, unsolved mysteries, and absorbing characters.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. Locked In.   

Carl Morck, fresh off of solving the nail-gun murder case, is thrown into jail when a suitcase full of money and drugs is found in his attic. Can Morck and the Department Q team unravel the reasons behind this situation and get him out of prison before he is murdered by one of the inmates he had put into the same jail? (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).