Book review: 'Mercy'

Book: Mercy
Author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 490 pages
Price: Rs299

It was her annual holiday away from the standard 14-meetings-a-day workday. She was going to Berlin with her mute brother. The boat ride was her last memory before she blacked out. When she awoke, she realised she was in a strange room with no doors or windows. Her captors gave her food and water in buckets but didn’t answer the one question she asked them: why was this happening to her?

Danish Member of Parliament Merete Lynggaard had disappeared in March 2002. The police found no evidence of foul play and assumed she had drowned while travelling from Denmark to Germany. But because the police couldn’t find her body, the case was never officially closed.

In 2007, the Danish government announced the formation of a new police wing called ‘Department Q’ to close ‘cold cases’ — crimes that were never solved. The only detective that the Copenhagen homicide chief can spare to head the department is Carl Mørck, a cop with no regard for rules, hierarchy or politics within the police force. Carl is shunted to the basement of the police headquarters with boxes of unsolved cases and a jack-of-all-trades Middle-Eastern assistant, Assad. Assad can sweep floors and fix a television in 10 minutes but also shows too much interest in Carl’s cases and drives at speeds twice the legal limit.

The gripping mystery unfolds through twin narratives. Merete’s point of view highlights the desolation of the victim as she spends year after year in an alternately pitch-dark and too-bright chamber. Carl’s point of view highlights the frustrations of handling a case that seems to be going nowhere. Everyone, including him, believes the victim drowned.

Carl is a brilliant but disturbed detective; Merete, a resolute woman and loyal sister dealing with a mistake she believes she made a long time ago.

The most interesting character is Assad, a dark, mysterious Syrian with extraordinary powers of observation, who is also adept at the use of illegal firearms. Unlike most crime writing, in Mercy, the mystery isn’t solved by one brilliant detective alone, but with the help of his unqualified assistant. Mercy, too, displays that distinctive bleakness that’s typical of Scandinavian crime fiction.

On the whole, a riveting read.