The Absent One by Jussi Alder-Olsen

I read the first book in the Department Q series, The Keeper of Lost Causes, last year, and I gobbled it up like candy and truly enjoyed it. The two main characters, a police detective named Carl Morck and his assistant Hafez el-Assad, are such a delightful pairing. Morck is tired and cynical and unable to deal with everyday social niceties and Assad is cheerful and hardworking and clearly hiding a certain darkness in his own past.  In The Absent One, we get a new member of Department Q, a seemingly supremely competent assistant/secretary named Rose who is sometimes acerbic, sometimes sweet, and, at least so far, not well-developed.

In The Keeper of Lost Causes, we established that Morck has been sent to Department Q to handle cold cases because the powers that be have lost confidence in Morck as a police officer and investigator. We pick up the story in The Absent One with Morck tackling a cold case that isn't really a cold case because someone is already in jail for the crime.  His superiors are not keen on his investigation, but he keeps persevering until he and Assad are involved in a shootout that involves a rabid fox and a crossbow wound.

This isn't a typical mystery, but more of a thriller. We know who did what from the very beginning. What we don't know is how our heroes (anti-heroes?) are going to figure it out on their end and find a solution for all of us.  I am not nearly as enthusiastic about this second book as I was the first book, but I'm definitely putting the next book in the series on hold at my local library.  The relationships between the characters is just too good for me to stop reading.