The Scarred Woman

July 10, 2017
Scandinavian crime fiction fans will find bestseller Adler-Olsen’s seventh Department Q novel (after 2015’s The Hanging Girl) satisfyingly dark, both in tone and content. Carl Mørck, the cantankerous head of Department Q (Copenhagen’s cold-case division), seeks a connection between the murder of an elderly woman and a similar crime more than a decade earlier. With looming budget cuts threatening the very existence of Department Q and a crime documentary program’s production crew dogging his every move, Mørck must also deal with the mental unraveling of his assistant, Rose Knudsen, whose nightmarish past comes to light after she inexplicably vanishes. When Mørck and his team discover that a series of brutal hit-and-run murders targeting young women are connected with not only the cold case but Rose’s disappearance, they must locate her before it’s too late. The parallel story lines make this an undeniable page-turner, but the portrayal of female characters as morally bankrupt and/or irreparably damaged may strike some readers as chauvinistic.

October 30, 2017
Scottish actor Malcolm returns to ably narrate the latest installment of the Department Q series by bestselling Danish crime novelist Adler-Olsen. The series stars Carl Mørck, the cantankerous middle-age head of Copenhagen’s Department Q, a neglected cold-case division housed in the basement of police headquarters. As the book opens, Mørck and his team are investigating several unpromising and seemingly unrelated cases, which turn out to be linked. They’re also facing budget cuts, bureaucratic rivalries, and the disappearance of a mentally ill colleague. The book’s many subplots keep the listener attuned, and the resolutions are satisfying. Malcolm is an excellent stand-in for Mørck in both tone and temperament, and he also skillfully represents the book’s other characters, many of whom are young women. He’s called upon to employ a range of accents, including German and Icelandic, and rises to the challenge. This seventh outing for Mørck will delight Adler-Olsen’s many fans, and Malcolm once again delivers as narrator. A Dutton hardcover.