{"id":1076,"date":"2013-07-26T18:04:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T00:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2013-07-26T18:04:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T00:04:26","slug":"jussi-adler-olsen-the-absent-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jussi-adler-olsen-the-absent-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Jussi Adler-Olsen: The Absent One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Absent One<\/i>, Jussi Adler-Olsen\u2019s second novel in his gripping Department Q series, creates one of the more interesting female characters in recent fiction.\u00a0 While Kimmie, the \u201cabsent one\u201d of the title, is certainly not entirely sympathetic, as Adler-Olsen draws the reader deeper into her world there are sympathetic glimmers.\u00a0 Explanations of her behavior.\u00a0 And a portrayal of an exceptionally strong woman who ultimately chooses to do the right thing.<\/p>\n

\"AbsentOne\"<\/a>While that is part of this novel, this is also, like the first novel, a terrific thriller that will keep any reader glued to the page.\u00a0 Adler-Olsen has set up his two main characters, Carl and Assad, as a perfect yin and yang.\u00a0 They are the reliable and comfortable center of the novels, and in this one he\u2019s added a third party, Rose, greeted by Carl as grumpily as he initially greeted Assad.\u00a0 Despite Rose\u2019s alleged assignment of assembling new desks for their workspace, she manages to prove to Carl that she has plenty to offer.<\/p>\n

This is a meticulously assembled novel.\u00a0 There are several threads which don\u2019t clearly hang together at first but eventually they do.\u00a0 Department Q is a cold case department, and a file comes across Carl\u2019s desk where the murderer has been found, tried and put in jail.\u00a0 As far as Carl\u2019s superiors are concerned, there\u2019s nothing to investigate, but the more Carl reads about the case and as he talks to various people involved, the more certain he becomes that there was more than one perpetrator.<\/p>\n

The case, a brutal killing of a young sister and brother, seems to connect to a gang of privileged boarding school kids who on their own are alarming enough; united, they are a malevolent force to be reckoned with.\u00a0 The missing piece of their little group is Kimmie, who has been living on the streets of Copenhagen for years, invisible to everyone, even to those who are trying to find her.<\/p>\n

The file has a notation of a series of crimes that seem to also be connected to the same gang \u2013 brutal assaults and disappearances or murders that have remained unsolved.\u00a0 As Carl and Assad begin to carefully and thoroughly uncover clues and investigate the case, they are ordered to stop by the police commissioner.\u00a0 Like any good mystery hero, Carl operates under his own set of rules, and he doesn\u2019t stop investigating though things get dicey as the gang appears to be leaving some subtle threats in his home.<\/p>\n

Kimmie\u2019s story is threaded through the narrative \u2013 as we come to know the male members of the gang, now all very successful businessmen \u2013 we also get to know Kimmie and her backstory.\u00a0 The reason she\u2019s living on the streets isn\u2019t completely revealed until towards the end of the book, but as you read Adler-Olsen keeps the reader in a state of unease.\u00a0 Was what Kimmie did justified?\u00a0 How culpable was she?\u00a0 How long can she remain invisible?<\/p>\n

I would say Kimmie\u2019s behavior, while far from justifiable, is ultimately understandable and in portions forgivable.\u00a0 It\u2019s a subtle and not so subtle story of sexism.\u00a0 The subtlety comes with the fact that while Kimmie was a part of the gang, she\u2019s also used by them in various ways.\u00a0 Destructive herself, she\u2019s a real portrait of a complicated human being.\u00a0 To find that inside a novel that has as many gory thrills and twists as a Jeffery Deaver novel is a dark delight.\u00a0 Adler-Olsen is definitely one of the best additions to the new wave of Scandinavian crime fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Absent One, Jussi Adler-Olsen\u2019s second novel in his gripping Department Q series, creates one of the more interesting female characters in recent fiction.\u00a0 While Kimmie, the \u201cabsent one\u201d of the title, is certainly not entirely sympathetic, as Adler-Olsen draws the reader deeper into her world there are sympathetic glimmers.\u00a0 Explanations of her behavior.\u00a0 And … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1078,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}