Enter the Librarian, a Review by Josh Hanagarne The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler Olsen Every tim

Enter the Librarian, a Review by Josh Hanagarne

The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler Olsen 

Every time I finish a new Jussi Adler-Olsen book I find myself thinking…I loved that. I kind of wish I didn’t. To wit, the Department Q detective series is some messed up stuff, and The Hanging Girl fits right in.

A brief digression:

I was rereading Geek Love by Katherine Dunn not too long ago. Published in 2002, it’s the incredibly disturbing story of a family of circus freaks. The parents gleefully experiment with drugs each time the mother is pregnant, attempting to create more severe birth defects and thus, new attractions for the show. The uproar in certain circle was calamitous. Geek Love became my yardstick for how shocking a book could be. But again, that was 2002.

If it came out today, in a market saturated by brutal bestselling books replete with heinous crimes against women, Geek Love would still be a masterful work, but its power to shock wouldn’t be anywhere near as potent as in 2002.

Back to The Hanging Girl In an era where there’s a lot of what we might call “Stieg Larrson lite,” violent nordic mysteries about savaged women and deviant villains have also lost their power to shock this reader. Except for Jussi Adler-Olsen and my halfhearted desire to stop enjoying their books.

They’realwaysshocking. They’re always brutal. They’re always so messed up, even now that every other thriller is trying to up the ante with gruesomeness. And they’re always surprising, even though the Department Q series has been going for a while now and you more or less know what to expect as far as tone and content. This is the highest compliment I can pay to an author working in a genre that is often predictable: I never have any idea what Adler-Olsen is up to.

Ok. Fans of detective Carl Morck will be happy, if not surprised, to learn that he is still irascible, world weary, capable of great quips, not as long-suffering as his subordinates might wish, and his detective skills are as sharp as ever.

This time the case is–again, this is saying something for an Adler-Olsen novel–peculiar and grim. An old case–if you’re unfamiliar with the series, the books often begin with a profoundly cold case being foisted upon Morck, who gets intrigued and involved against his better judgment–lands on his desk.

A seventeen years old girl vanishes from her school. If I tried to tell you where the story lands, and the circuitous route by which it arrives, you’d be as likely to say “Huh, how?” as to say “Whoa! When does it come out?”

Adler Olsen’s villains are some of the best in the business, and the shrewd, manipulative psycho he’s concocted here is truly chilling. I’m such a sucker for brilliant weirdos in books, and this one is put to fantastic use.

I’m also an easy mark for cult material, and The Hanging Girl involves some religious…zealots. You may never look at the sun quite the same way again.

If you love great mysteries, you will not be disappointed. I’ve yet to outguess the author, and most of the twists are the opposite of telegraphed. But again, be advised–The Hanging Girl in terms of content, is comparable (I would say better in most ways) with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. It is violent, disturbing, cynical, very funny, and I believe it may be the author’s finest work.

But if you think it sounds like it’s too much for you, consider that a clue. To repeat myself yet once more, I almostwish I didn’t love his books. I always wonder what it says about me.