Thursday, July 29, 2021

The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen

 

(hb; 2012: second book in the Department Q series. Translated from the Danish by K.E. Semmel.)

From the inside flap

“[Detective Carl] Mørck is satisfied with the notion of picking up long-cold leads. So he’s naturally intrigued when a closed case lands on his desk. A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects─part of a group of privileged boarding-school students─confessed and was convicted.

“But when Mørck reopens the files, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Looking into the supposedly solved case leads him to Kimmie, a woman living on the streetsk, stealing to survive. Kimmie has mastered evading the police, but now they aren’t the only ones looking for her─because Kimmie has secrets that certain influential individuals would kill to keep buried. . . as well as one of her own that could turn everything on its head.”

 

Review

Like the previous Department Q novel The Keeper of Lost Causes, Absent is an entertaining, slick and hard-to-set-down thriller/police procedural, this entry with particularly well-to-do and sadistic villains and a fascinating antihero (Kimmie) who’s stalking them. There are few surprises in Absent, but it’s still a good genre read, worth owning. Followed by A Conspiracy of Faith.

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The resulting 2014 Danish film, Department Q: The Absent One, was released in Denmark on November 23, 2014.

Mikkel Nørgaard directed the film, from a screenplay by Rasmus Heisterberg, based on Nikolaj Arcel’s concept.

Nikolaj Lie Kaas played Carl Mørck. Fares Fares played Hafez el-Assad. Søren Pilmark played Marcus Jacobsen. Morton Kirkskov played Lars Bjørn. Johanne Louis Schmidt played Rose.

Danica Curcic played Kimmie Katherine Greis-Rosenthal played Tine.

Pilou Asbӕk played Ditlev Pram. David Dencik played Ulrik Dybbøl.

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