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Finally caught up with a number of latest-available series installments for various police procedural mysteries. Given that they seem to currently be the best-known bestselling Nordic Noir authors for their respective countries, it was interesting to contrast Adler-Olsen and Nesbø's styles after having read both their books in quick succession. Adler-Olsen loves playing “eh, most of these people are guilty of something, now why don't you try and figure out exactly what”, while Nesbø wades straight into the red herring pool of “these persons' activities look really, really suspicious, but there's actually an innocuous explanation for most of them and someone else is probably the culprit instead”.
IMHO, the original title of Selfies for Jussi Adler-Olsen's latest Department Q novel The Scarred Woman worked much better thematically with the case inside, which was (hopefully satirical) look at the dark side of the Danish welfare system. Frankly, the story was more interesting when it came to the personal developments for supporting character Rose, whose mysterious backstory has been hinted at for a number of previous installments. Though it was pretty entertaining watching a number of characters try to plot murders upon each other, with varying degrees of success.
As for Jo Nesbø's The Thirst, it was a typical Harry Hole novel, with a little extra focus on a contrasting cop team also handling the case, since there had to be some build-up to get Harry onto it after some developments in the previous novel which made it look like a happily ever after series wrap-up. I do wonder if it's meant to be quasi-allegorical to Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun's classic The Hunger, given that Nesbø sometimes draws upon other influences in his work (Jesus for The Son and IIRC, Les Misérables for Midnight Sun, and he's got a Macbeth retelling coming up). Anyway, I liked the continuing extended glimpses of various Harry-adjacent characters, and the case had interesting aspects even though the type of killer it initially appears to be is rather cliché.
Leena Lehtolainen's Before I Go was a more mature entry in her gradually-translated Maria Kallio series (only around 6 or 7 behind the Finnish originals now, and on sale for just $1.99 each from AmazonCrossing this month), with Maria dealing with more in the way of office politics and public service corruption and work-life balance issues as she climbs the career ladder, and also coming to certain realizations about the somewhat reckless risk-taking she's been engaging in for much of the series. The case, involving the seemingly hate crime-motivated murder of a prominent gay politician, provided an interesting look at retro Finnish societal attitudes towards LGBT persons and alternative lifestyles, which are sadly kind of unprogressed from that mid-90s state in other countries today.
Overall, solid but not stellar entries nicely continuing their respective series, worth looking at for ongoing character developments if you've already been following them, and some interesting aspects to their various cases if you've been thinking of giving them a try at some point.
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