Set in Portugal of the 1990s, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro was inspired by a real event: the discovery in 1966 of a headless corpse in a park. As it turned out, the dead man had been killed in a police station in Lisbon; his tortured body was later dumped. The novel is at the same time a story of murder and a commentary on several social, political and philosophical issues -- none the least of which is torture and moral decay.

As the novel opens, a gypsy named Manolo who lives in an encampment outside of Oporto has discovered a body with no head. Meanwhile, in Lisbon, a young journalist writing for the tabloid O Acontecimento (whose motto is "What every citizen needs to know") is summoned by his editor to go to Oporto and cover the story. The journalist, Firmino, would rather be spending the time in the library working on research for his study of the Post-War Portuguese novel, but has no choice but to do as he's told. Off he goes to Oporto, and through the connections of a certain Dona Rosa who owns a pension where Firmino is staying, he is put in touch with Manolo the Gypsy. The only real thing Manolo can tell him is that the corpse was wearing a t-shirt with the words "Stones of Portugal" on the front. Following up that clue, Firmino discovers that the dead man is one Damasceno Monteiro, who has been missing for a few days. Further investigation reveals that he was smack in the middle of a plot to rip off some heroin dealers, the likely reason he had to die. This leads Firmino to a shady disco, prostitution, and drug trafficking. As more facts become known, Firmino's boss wants him to make contact with a lawyer named Mello Sequeiro, aka Don Fernando -- who has dedicated himself to championing the cause of the unfortunates, those who because of upper-class families like his, have been historically mistreated and oppressed. He's also a a believer in the power of the pen as a vehicle for publicizing corruption and abuse in its many forms, which is why he is there to guide Firmino in his reporting.

While The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro is definitely a story of murder, it's not really a typical mystery. The clues are found easily, and while Firmino is nosing out the story, his mind is on its publication rather than on himself as a detective-type figure. The story is told largely from Firmino's point of view, although there are a few exceptions. The discovery of the body by Manolo the Gypsy, the occasional news reports published in Firmino's tabloid, and a staticky recording of a trial toward the end all stand alone. The characters, with the exception of a few main people, are all sort of on the periphery -- and the story is told so that there isn't much development of those individuals. But it doesn't really matter -- while the focal point that brings all of these people together is definitely the murder of Damasceno Monteiro, it's the dialogues between Firmino and Don Fernando that establish the importance of the novel. They allow the reader to ponder the relationship between literature, the law and the reality of what goes on in those institutions that exist for the public's protection. While Firmino wants nothing more than to return to studying literature, Don Fernando believes that literature is at its most valuable when a writer takes up his pen to take action against torture and other injustices -- to disturb people's psyches enough to let them know that these things really happen where they live. After obsessing over legal theory for years, Don Fernando's moved beyond study to practice -- defending those who are victims. And it's not just the victims of torture he's defending or representing -- there are others who are on the downtrodden side of life that he cares about as well, like the Gypsies, who are victims of society's xenophobia and racism.

As a crime novel, it's not so much a whodunit or a whydunit ...the answers to these questions are conveyed very close to the beginning. And there's a lot of theoretical discussion going on, so if that's not your thing, you may get very bored very quickly. But if you hang in there, there's definitely a message involved in all of this madness.

I liked the book, and ironically, I lost the same book twice and had to order a new copy -- for a while there The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro had to stay missing until I could replace it. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the importance of literature as a medium for change or social & political awareness.

The Keeper of Lost Causes is the beginning of yet another crime series, and it dawned on me as I opened it that with all of these new books coming out and the amount of time it's going to take to read them, it would be nice if these new series openers brought something new to the table in the realm of crime fiction. Et voilà -- after finishing Adler-Olsen's book, I can definitely say this book qualifies. And I can also say that it's a series I'll definitely continue.

As is the case in many novels from Scandinavia, politics once again interferes with how the police do their jobs, and as Keeper of Lost Causes opens, the homicide division chief of the Copenhagen Police has been told that he's going to have to "provide a flying squad for hopeless cases" -- to look into cold cases that have long since been shelved. And as it so happens, the homicide chief is all for it. There's a budget attached (which the chief plans to appropriate), and he has just the perfect person in mind to take it on: Detective Carl Mørck. Mørck has recently returned to active duty after an ambush at a crime scene, where one cop was killed, one was left paralyzed and unable to walk, and Mørck himself was injured. Now Mørck is back to work, but he comes in late, is constantly in a bad mood, and continues to blame himself for what happened. Mørck's moods and his emotional baggage do not make for good work relations, so moving Mørck to the newly-formed "Department Q" solves a lot of problems. Mørck takes on the job, and promptly moves to the basement, the home of Department Q, and proceeds not to care and to read and play a lot of Sudoku. When he figures out that Department Q actually has a budget, he asks for and is given an assistant, Assad. Although his new helper is there to mainly make coffee and clean up the place, after getting rather bored with doing a whole lot of nothing, Mørck decides to take a look through some of the cold-case files, and Assad is more than happy to help. When they come across the five-year old case of the missing Merete Lynggaard, head of the parliamentary Health Committee, Mørck finds himself against his will slowly becoming interested. Lynggaard has disappeared from a crowded ferry and with no clues coming to light, the original investigation ended. But Mørck starts the case again with fresh eyes -- maybe just in time, as it turns out. The story switches from 2002, with the story of Merete Lynggaard to 2007 and the story of Mørck and the investigation into her disappearance, and the chapters go back and forth in time.

While the story itself is quite good, very well told and contains a core mystery that will keep you flipping pages, what makes this book stand out are the characters, especially Mørck and Assad, and Adler-Olsen's attention to detail. Mørck's personal life is really kind of out there, with Vigga, a rather flighty ex-wife to be whose latest desire is to have an art gallery (for which Morck will foot the bill), a stepson who lives with him rather than with his mother, and an overweight tenant named Morten who hasn't quite figured out what he wants to be when he grows up, and when not working at his video store, is Carl's housekeeper as well, the "best housewife" Carl ever had. As a cop, Mørck's burnout is obvious, as is his sense of guilt and the fact that he's an outcast in his department. But underneath it all, he's a top-notch detective and it is easy to tell that he's really eager to get back into the game despite what he says and how he acts. Assad, on the other hand, is quite the enigma, and it's very obvious that there's more to him than what's on the surface. From little hints that are dropped throughout the story, he comes from Syria, has a cryptic past and the author never fully answers the question of who he really is -- my guess was either a criminal or a member of a secret police group or something along those lines. I expect that as the series progresses, more of these little hints will be given until a more complete picture is available. Anyway, the dynamic between Mørck and Assad develops over the course of the novel, moving from Assad as a kind of errand boy/office cleaner to Assad as a partner in Carl's investigation. Assad's little surprises and Carl's reaction to them make for some funny reading moments -- including Assad's charming attitude to one of the women working in the department whom Carl lovingly calls "the she-wolf." Even though Mørck may roll his eyes at the paper shades over the basement lights or the smell of middle-eastern food permeating the office, eventually both of these men find a mutual respect for each other and make a connection as the exiles that they truly are.

This dynamic between the two main characters,as well as the author's amazing characterizations of the other people who surround Carl Mørck on a daily basis definitely make for something new and intriguing to look forward to in the next book, which I hope is translated soon. All of the hallmarks of Scandinavian crime fiction are also found in this book -- politics, social issues, etc., but when you get right down to it, the fact that there's room here and there to laugh in and among all the seriousness rounds out the story a bit more than what you'd normally find in books from this region. I'll definitely recommend Keeper of Lost Causes not just to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction, but to crime fiction readers in general. It is amazingly good.

It really is a shame to have missed the first five novels in this series, because Dregs is exactly what I look for when I'm reading a novel of crime fiction. It has a good plot, enough suspects to keep the reader guessing, very little in the way of extraneous subplot, romance or main-character existentialist angst/crisis so that the reader stays focused on the crime and its solution. It is a brilliant police procedural which is all about getting to the root of the mystery at the heart of the story.

Set in Norway, the novel opens with the discovery of a tennis shoe which is rolling around at the edge of the shore. Inside the shoe is a left foot, and much to the dismay of Chief Inspector William Wisting, it is not the first left foot in a shoe to have washed up recently, meaning that the feet do not belong to the same people. Certain characteristics of the shoes lead the group to consider whether or not these shoes have anything to do with four people who have recently gone missing. Three of them are elderly; the fourth, a paranoid schizophrenic, suffers from delusions of being watched and her home secretly searched by some sort of foreign intelligence organization. And things get even more complicated as more shoes come to the shore and a body or two is found. The killer has to be stopped, but this will not be an easy task: before the case can be solved, Wisting and his team are faced with having to unravel decades worth of secrets which someone really want to keep hidden.

This is not a high-adventure, on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller, nor is it a fast-paced crime fiction with lots of subplots to be resolved. It is a very clean, intelligent and streamlined police procedural, very realistic and credible, with very little in the story to come between the reader and his or her attention to the main plot and the investigation. The author manages to offer an intriguing mystery that hooks the reader from the very first paragraph. He also smoothly integrates his thoughts about important social and political issues and reflects on the nature of imprisonment and punishment through the journalistic work of Wisting's daughter Line. It is very well written, although I must say I would have liked to have been better acquainted with the main characters' backstories before having to start with book six. -sigh-

The lack of a gimmicky serial killer or high-speed thrills may turn off some readers who are used to that sort of thing in their Scandinavian crime fiction, but to me, this book borders on perfect. While those elements are fun, there's nothing like a serious, good old-fashioned police procedural for the true lover of crime and mystery fiction. In Dregs, there is a good mystery, a good plot, and good, well-timed and well-paced progress through the investigation leading to the revelation at the end.

Very highly recommended, and it will work for readers not only of Scandinavian crime fiction but for readers of serious, intelligent police procedurals as well.

The Pledge is a novel of one man's obsession; it is at the same time a critique of writers who pen detective fiction and mysteries. There's no heart-pounding plot here, just a very smooth narrative of a detective's obsession with solving a case based on a promise he made. And though it was written a very long time ago, it is still a novel of great quality, 5-star reading material.

Set in Switzerland, the story begins with a writer (presumably Dürrenmatt himself) who has been invited to give a talk on the art of writing detective stories. It is poorly attended because of a competing talk on Goethe, but one of those who came is a Dr. H., the former chief of police in the canton of Zurich. After a few Johnnie Walkers, Dr. H. offers to take the writer back to Zurich the next day. Once the hair-raising ride through the fog- and snow-covered mountains is over, and after a stop for gas, Dr. H. begins to tell his passenger that he never thought too highly of detective novels:

"You set your stories up logically, like a chess game: here's the criminal, there's the victim, here's an accomplice, there's a beneficiary; and all the detective needs to know is the rules, he replays the moves of the game, and checkmate, the criminal is caught and justice has triumphed. This fantasy drives me crazy."

Continuing, he chides the author for not taking the element of chance into account in his stories, and proceeds to relate an amazing story to make his point.

One of Dr. H.'s best men, Inspector Matthäi,described by Dr. H. as a genius, is leaving the police department to take a job in Jordan reorganizing the Jordanian police, a highly prestigious position for himself and a move that puts a feather in the cap of the local police. But as he's set to leave, he becomes involved in investigating the murder of a little girl. At his meeting with the girl's parents, he makes a promise "on his eternal salvation" that the police will find whoever did this. That pledge ultimately turns out to be Matthäi's undoing. The police arrest the peddler who discovered the body, and after his interrogation, he makes a confession and commits suicide. The case is closed. Matthäi begins to wonder if perhaps the police had the wrong suspect and that perhaps the girl's killer is still out there. At this point, he gives up his promising new career to make good on his promise, sets a carefully-thought out trap, and because of a random act of chance, his obsession turns to self-destructing mania. (Note: this is not actually a spoiler; I'm just glossing over in an outline here).

Matthai's story is ultimately a symbol of the futility of assuming that a) reason alone can bring order to the world and b) reason is the only vehicle for the understanding of reality. Dürrenmatt explains that when one's perception of reality is colored by his reason, he fails to take into account random acts of chance that arise in any given situation. When reality doesn't conform to one's calculations, a line is crossed and that rationality just breaks down. But according to Dürrenmatt, in the hands of the detective novelist, Matthai's story would ignore the random elements that exist and


"Matthai would actually find a murderer, one of your comical saints, some sectarian preacher with a heart of gold who is, of course, innocent and utterly incapable of doing anything evil, and just for that reason, by one of your more malicious inventions, he would attract every shred of suspicion the plot has to offer. Matthai would kill this poor soul, all his proofs would be confirmed, whereupon we at headquarters would take the happy detective back into our fold and celebrate him as a genius. That's another conceivable version."


Granted, he understands the reader's need for justice to prevail in the long run, but his point is that the detective novelist may be the greatest deceiver of all:

"You can't come to grips with reality by logic alone... You don't try to grapple with a reality that keeps eluding us, you just set up a manageable world. That world may be perfect, but it's a lie."


I cannot recommend this novel highly enough -- anyone who reads or writes crime fiction ought to give it a go. The device of framing a critique of detective novelists within the context of a detective novel is sheer genius. But even better, it provides a lot of food for thought for those of us who love crime fiction -- what is it exactly we want in a good mystery or detective novel? Are we content to accept the package all neatly tied in a bow when we know that in reality, not all things come to a conclusion? And what about those random elements of chance -- are they dealt with in the fiction we read? The Pledge is absolutely stunning. Although it may have a bit of a philosophical bent that will be unappreciated by some readers, I think most people will find it fascinating.

The Demon of Dakar is a police procedural set in Uppsala, Sweden where the author makes his home. Ann Lindell is a detective inspector in the violent crimes division of the Uppsala Police, and she's also a single mom of one little boy.

Although the action of this novel takes place in Sweden, it begins with the story of Manuel Alavez, who is on his way from Mexico to Sweden to visit his brother Patricio. Patricio and his brother Angel got caught up in a drug-smuggling operation; Angel was killed and Patricio was imprisoned. Manuel needs to know exactly what happened, why Angel died. Two men, a "fat one," and a "tall one," had come to Oaxaca to recruit poor campesinos into smuggling drugs, tempting them with large amounts of money. They had promised Patricio ten thousand dollars, even if he was caught, and as Patricio notes, that sum was the equivalent of over "seven thousand hours of work." Manuel wants that money; if his brother won't take it, it will go to his mother back in Mexico. Manuel discovers that the big man is the owner of a restaurant in Uppsala called Dakar, and goes by the name of Slobodan Andersson; the tall one is Armas, his partner.

Lindell and her team become involved when the body of a man is found. His throat has been cut, and the only evidence of his identity was in the remnant of a tattoo which had been sliced off of the body. The tattoo nags at Lindell, who knows that its removal is an important clue. But before she can identify the tattoo, the body is given a name -- Armas, which leads Lindell to Dakar and to Slobodan Andersson. Armas' death sparks a long chain of events, and as the police keep investigating, they begin to realize that there are connections between all of them that will lead them to the killer, hopefully long before anyone else turns up dead. The reader knows who's behind it all, and we watch, waiting for the police to find that one link in the chain to give the killer a name.

There are many good things about this novel, such as the character portrayals and the fun in waiting for the police to gather all of the information they need to catch the murderer. What strikes me the most, however, is the question that Eriksson is asking here about the nature of justice. I can't really go into much detail about this, but I have to say, I found myself wondering about how much I cared for the killer. Normally I'm gung-ho for the police to get the guy, but this time I was hoping he'd get away. But considering all that is good about this book, this is probably my least favorite of the three Lindell novels I've read so far. First, there is WAY too much going on in here. Subplot after subplot after subplot wrecked it for me. It's not as tight or concise as the other two novels and a lot of minor characters' personal lives got in the way. And then there's this: I'm reading along, enjoying the story and just after the killer's reflections on his encounter with Armas, there's this:

"It sometimes happened that Ann Lindell woke up beautiful... She stretched out in bed as if to identify her limbs, and really fell that all of the parts of her body belonged together. That it was she, Ann, who lay there, half awake, half lingering in sleep, still brushing the dram that was perhaps the source of her well-being. The warmth under the covers did her good. She almost always slept nude, in contact with her body. Sometimes she kept her panties on, with a mixed feeling and need for protection. She did not know how she should describe the feeling but she didn't care..."

etc. Then a quick switch to the police station. This threw me off track, truth be told, and I was left pondering why that little part is even in there other than for more character development. It was very jarring, and disconcerting, and totally disrupted my reading flow.

Overall, it's a good book, not great, and I think that the story could have been told much more efficiently and cleanly than it was. If I had to give a one-word impression of how I feel about this book -- it would be "muddled." That is not to say I didn't like it, because I did, and I definitely recommend it. And to answer the question of whether or not I'd read another book by Eriksson, I've already started The Hand that Trembles. Many people have given Demon of Dakar a two-thumbs-up and four- and five-star reviews, so it's once again probably me. I'm discovering that I'm a very tough audience.

"You do. The thing. Anyway."...You do the thing anyway. Yes. Yes. You do it in spite of fear. You do the thing anyway. No matter what. Because you have to. Because you know it's right. Because you believe in it. Because by not doing it you're betraying yourself."


You Deserve Nothing is a novel that long after you've finished reading will stay on your mind as you replay it in your head. And to me, that is what makes a book good and rise well above the ordinary. It is, unbelievably, Alexander Maksik's first novel, and if this is only his opening shot into the book-reading world, I can't wait for his second.

You Deserve Nothing is a character-driven story, told through multiple perspectives, centering around one man, Will Silver. Will is a 33-year old English teacher at the International Foreign School in Paris. He teaches a senior seminar in English -- a popular class where he introduces the students to existentialism in literature. He believes that literature is "irrelevant" unless the questions which arise from it also have some impact on the reader's lives. This point of view doesn't always sit well with the head of the school, who feels that Silver's only job is to guide the students through literature and help them to understand it, without any challenges to their individual beliefs. But Silver's seminar students, for the most part, love him. He's that rare breed of teacher who lets his students know that their thoughts matter as much as those of the writers of the material he gives them. Will finds it "the truest, rarest, sweetest thing" when the students are actively making connections and listening to each other, when there's a palpable enthusiasm among the students over what they're doing in that class, and when "they're all there together." But at the same time, for Will, this coming alive is as he notes, all he has, and believes erroneously that it's all that the students have as well. Not all of Silver's students are so enchanted with him; one of his students, Ariel calls him a fake, knowing full well what's going on with him outside of class; and Colin, another member of the class, senses something, but gives him a chance until the cracks start to show in Will's teachings. Will battles with the strain between his public and private lives throughout the novel.

The other voices belong to Gilad, one of Silver's seminar students, and Marie, a student at the IFS. Gilad is the son of an American diplomat and lives a chaotic life, moving from place to place. His father and mother live behind a facade -- once the dinner parties are over, Gilad's father absuses his wife. Gilad looks up to Will in a hero-worshipping sort of way, and takes the lessons he learns about from Will seriously, using them as a path toward his own self awareness. Gilad sees Will as a champion for living one's beliefs and acting accordingly, as "righteousness in a sea of ugliness" but all too soon this will change as Gilad witnesses Will's failure to act at a crucial moment.

Marie is the beautiful daughter of wealthy parents; she avoids talking to her mother because her mother sees in her only disappointment -- she's not French enough, she doesn't dress right, and her mom leaves pictures cut out from fashion magazines on Marie's bed to make her point. Although Marie is a student at IFS, Silver isn't one of her teachers, and Marie is highly sexually attracted to him and soon begins a relationship with him -- a clandestine one, or so Will believes. Her view of Will changes as she watches Will lapse into inertia and become a "phantom," little by little, making all the right noises during a crisis, but ultimately slipping away in the long run.

You Deserve Nothing is an amazing book. The characters are realistically portrayed; the author is equally able to capture the intensity of a 33 year-old man in the midst of his own existential crisis and the pettiness of a jealous, teenaged girl. I'm always amazed when a male author can write a woman's character so well; to capture the inner essence of a teenage girl in the throes of her first love must have been more difficult but he pulls it off. Then there's the sense of place that is so well evoked that the streets of Paris come alive. For some Paris is a magical place, the city of light as it were; for others its streets are cold and unfeeling.

If life is the sum of all the choices a person makes, there is also a divide between the decisions one makes and the courage to act on them, and this theme is well emphasized throughout the novel, as is its concomitant consideration of betrayal -- to one's self or to others. You Deserve Nothing is a highly-intelligent work, sifting through these ideas as they apply to each of the main characters and to those in the world in which they all live. What could have been just a mundane story is elevated to a level where the reader is left with several questions and a great deal of food for thought long after the last page is turned. I most highly recommend this book; it's one of the most thought-provoking and intelligent novels I've read in a very long while. Simply put, it's amazing.

I don't often expect much out of a book that is only 150 pages long -- actually, I don't remember the last time I read one this short that I walked away from simply dazzled. But there's so much in this little book that gives one pause to think about his or her own life, especially when you get to a certain age and something happens to make you look back over the past. And like the main character, Tony, in this novel, you get older physically but inside your head you tend to hold on to the you of an earlier, more youthful age, often revisiting those times in your memory every now and then. The trouble is, how accurate are those memories? Memory, like time, is malleable, and when confronted with a reality that doesn't exactly coincide with how you remember it, what do you do? How do you deal with your younger self from the point of view of your older self? I think this is why this book kept me engaged ... it's something that happens to everyone.

There's a mystery at the heart of this novel: Tony Webster, retired, has received a letter from an attorney informing him that he's been left 500 pounds from the mother of his first girlfriend Veronica. The second part of his inheritance is the diary of his school friend Adrian, a larger-than-life figure from Tony's school years, who had, later in his life, committed suicide. As he's pondering what all of this means, he begins to go back through his memories of Adrian, Veronica and his own life, or at least what he thinks he remembers. As he notes, he feels no "nostalgia" for his school years, but he needs to "return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty."

The story is related in two parts: the first is the story of Tony Webster looking back over his time at school in the 1960s in the sixth form (it's equivalent to our American senior year) with his group of friends, then on to his days with Veronica at university. The second part (which throws into question some of what Tony remembers from the first part) follows Tony as he tries to piece together the real story. He attempts to get hold of Adrian's diary, which Veronica refuses to give up, hoping that the real story is in there somewhere. Veronica has only allowed him a small piece of Adrian's writing, enough to tantalize him into discovering what part he might have played in later events. But what he discovers will bring him around the inevitable conclusion that

"You get towards the end of life -- no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?"


and by then he realizes that there's no way to go back and change either the situation or himself, that any possibility for change has long-since ended.

Considering its brevity, there is a great deal in this little book, and like all good books, it gives the reader a great deal of material for thought. There is a great deal of insight in here, as the narrator reflects on memory and its influence, the gap between our older and younger selves, aging and regrets. But one of the most important things I take away from this novel is the question of what I think I know about myself juxtaposed with the reality of memory as an imperfect entity. It's a lovely and poignant book, very well written, very thoughtful. Julian Barnes never disappoints, and this book is no exception.