Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel
Next up, the first of the Jade del Cameron series recommended by ATDrake: Suzanne Arruda's Mark of the Lion. This has been on my Amazon wishlist for a while, and I succumbed yesterday and bought it. Like I didn't have enough to read already.  |
Is this a bad time to remind you that the newest Ava Lee adventure by Ian Hamilton,
The Prince of Nanjing, is now out and couponable at Kobo (if they fix the Canadian contest codes)?
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the Jade del Cameron series. IIRC, the first book is a bit shaky and finding-its-ground (I myself got introduced to them via the 2nd, which was featured on the library's bookshelves as some sort of theme week promo), but it's pretty solid from then on.
As for me, had another batch of books to return to the library, of which I'd been reading Danish author
Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series starring a cold case police division in Copenhagen.
I'd previously bought the 1st-in-series in French when it was a Kobo Canada Daily Deal (and the 2nd-in-series French translation is also on sale for this month at roughly half-off the regular price) and thought it might be one of my experimental English/French tandem reads back when I thought I'd be feeling well enough to have time for that. But after the first, I just ended up mainlining the entire series in English to date.
It's the usual sort of Nordic Noir setup, ostensibly starring the typical grumpy curmudgeonly Danish detective With Issues, Carl Mørck, who's recovering from a traumatic cop experience which got him reshuffled to lighter duties, in between juggling a complex home situation which includes his surly teenaged former stepson living with him in preference to said stepson's actual mother, his estranged not-quite-ex-wife. This particular variant is distinguished by its supporting characters, which include his main assistant the Syrian refugee Assad, who's a hypercompetent Funny Foreigner with disturbing skills and possibly a background more sinister than it seems, and other assistant eccentric Rose, who's also very competent, but has some rather unusual issues going on herself.
Despite the cold case nature of the stories which revisit unsolved old stuff, there tends to be a parallel throughout the books of old crimes in the past being reflected in current crimes in the present (which may or may not be related). And there's an ongoing subplot thread of finding out just what happened in the case that got Mørck decomissioned from regular duty while killing one of his cop partners and crippling the other, slowly unraveling clues to that over the course of the books as well as the gradual recovery of the surviving partner over the years.
Overall, they're pretty good books and it's easy to see why they're popular bestsellers in many languages and have a planned series of film adaptations. Adler-Olsen does have a tendency to go for the twistiest plot twist he can apply, so the question is not so much "whodunnit?" as "who will have appeared to have dunnit but actually turn out to have been manipulated/framed by someone else who dunnit or have less culpability in dunning it than originally thought and be innocent of part of having dunnit while being unexpectedly guilty of something else?" But it generally works out in most cases, even if sometimes the surprise seems a little contrived. Also, oddly elaborate revenge schemes which seem like one would get bored with performing them halfway through.
All the books in the series are fairly good, though some seem noticeably better than others (and for bizarre marketing reasons, have different titles in the UK and North American translations up to a certain point):
- The Keeper of Lost Causes aka Mercy, a pretty interesting cold case which involves a mysteriously-disappeared politician and clues held in the mind of her mentally-disabled brother, though the eventually-revealed motivation and diabolical plan seemed a little over the top. But it was the a debut novel, so…
- The Absent One aka Disgrace, a somewhat refreshing but disturbing look at overprivileged rich kid bullies continuing their destructive courses through life (without horrible tragic backstories to excuse their evildoing) and the attempt to pin something on them.
- A Conspiracy of Faith aka Redemption, a kind of meh religion-obsessed serial killer that's mostly interesting for the portrayal of strong publicly-performed faith beliefs in the generally more secular and religiously-private Scandinavian countries. IMHO, Norwegian Jo Nesbø's The Redeemers in his Harry Hole series set in Oslo is a better murder mystery centred around a group of hardcore believers.
- The Purity of Vengeance aka Guilt, perhaps the best of the lot thus far, with a twisty revenge scheme carried out cleverly, and a plot twist that works pretty well, as well as a look at the Danish equivalent of Ireland's infamous Magdalene Laundries. If you pick just one to try reading, this should probably be it.
- The Marco Effect, another one of the somewhat meh ones, but interesting for its depiction of Denmark's involvement in foreign aid and attitudes toward foreigners, partly told from the viewpoint of a runaway Roma boy in hiding after having uncovered evidence of an old crime which makes his guilty clan put out a hit on him.
- The Hanging Girl, a middling one which is interesting in trying to track down clues for a case that was long ago dismissed as a mere accident, so that they can prove that it was actually murder. But interspliced with some sort of modern New Age endeavour which seems to be rather superfluous at first, but does eventually connect with some stuff that's going on with Mørck and the others. Interesting concept and good twists, but the execution of the storytelling could have been better.
Overall, medium-firm recommend if you like international crime series which deal with solving old cases (while maybe creating new ones in the process), and have some twisty plots and eccentric characters in them. The actual cases are pretty much standalone, and the personal developments are gradual and mostly backgrounded enough that you can probably read these out of order if you don't mind not seeing them revealed exactly as they develop.