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Novel transcends the mystery/thriller genre
Book Review
By Derryll White
Adler-Olsen, Jussi (2015). The Marco Effect.
Jussi Adler-Olsen shifts energies in ‘The Marco Effect.’ The two co-workers, Rose and Assad, who assist Carl Mørk in Department Q-Cold Cases, move to the forefront. Both civilian workers, Adler-Olsen has not been clear in any of his previous volumes as to where exactly they have come from. Assad, probably an Afghani, and Rose presumably from the wild streets of Copenhagen, but the author keeps the reader guessing.
In this volume Adler-Olsen adds a couple of new characters to Carl Mørk’s world – a new boss and his underling. But what he does most effectively in ‘The Marco Effect’ is take the reader into a changing Danish landscape – a place where the dregs of Europe operate boldly and efficiently. Criminal Americans, Lithuanians, Balts, Africans – they all contribute to a very nasty sense of Copenhagen and offer a view of a changing Europe. Mørk operates in a society under real stress from both legal and illegal immigration.
This is a very contemporary story, ending with comment on the Schenger open-border agreement currently in the news as Sweden again starts to police its borders. Corruption, fraud and personal theft are everywhere here, but most astounding in Adler-Olsen’s compassion for refugees and their situation. Marco embodies the best in personal courage and the worst in societal ignorance and usury. But the author has Carl Mørk, with the assistance of his team, move solidly into the realm of human compassion and unqualified acceptance. Marco comes out of the shadows.
Jussi Adler-Olsen has come strongly into his own voice here, writing a novel that transcends the mystery/thriller genre and enters the contemporary world of a changing Europe. I enjoyed ‘The Marco Effect’ and will be looking for the next Department Q novel, hopefully for Christmas.
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Excerpts from the novel:
CIVIL SERVICE – …and snitches seldom fared well. In modern-day Denmark there were examples aplenty. One recent instance was that of an agent of the Danish military’s intelligence service who was handed a prison sentence for having demonstrated that the country’s prime minister had withheld vital information from parliament in order to lead his country into war in Iraq. Not exactly the kind of attitude that encourages candor.
POLITICAL INSENSITIVITY – The house, a small yellow bungalow from the thirties, lay on sloping ground with a spectacular view across the Utterslev marsh, the monumental ugliness of the Høje Gladsaxe ghetto beyond. In this area of Copenhagen, history was thus laid bare, a grim manifestation of why humanity was the worst thing that could happen to this green planet.
Carl shook his head. Welfare-state concrete slapped down in a landscape of beauty, a pillar of shame in Danish architecture. What a flagrant lack of foresight.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
