The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen is a mystery novel set in Denmark. It follows a cynical police detective who is newly returned to work after recovering from an on the job shooting as he is put in charge of a newly formed cold case unit.  We follow him and his assistant, a hilarious Middle Eastern man who has much beneath his sunny surface, as they solve the case of a member of Parliament who had mysteriously disappeared on a ferry five years earlier.

This really was a gripping tale. I was really doing the "just one more chapter" thing and staying up too late to read it.  It's been a long time since I was quite so involved in a fiction book (maybe it was Pillars of the Earth?), so it was delightful.

I thought our main character, Carl Morck, was a delightfully grumpy guy. He reminded me a lot of my husband, so there's that, I suppose. I thought his assistant was a delightful lighter note to the dark story, but I also think there's a depth to the character that I presume gets more detailed in future books in the series. There were some cultural jokes, particularly about names ("is this weird name an unusual name?") that I didn't entirely understand because they're all kind of weird names to my American ear, but I loved that. I love that it didn't get taken out in translation or dumbed down for dumb Americans like me.

I may have guessed the answer to the mystery subplot pretty early on, but that didn't mean I wasn't on the edge of my seat waiting to figure out if our heroes could solve it.  It was riveting and I think I'm going to read the rest of this series. 

You should read it, too.