The Marco Effect by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The Keeper of Lost Causes
 The Absent One
 A Conspiracy of Faith
The Purity of Vengeance

The fifth book in the Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, The Marco Effect tells us the saga of an international swindling scheme, along with some good old-fashioned murder to cover up the white collar crimes. Along the way we run into corrupt government officials, corrupt government officials with hearts of gold, and a teenager who is born into an abusive situation and desperately wants out of it.  Our Department Q heroes are but bit players in this expansive tale, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you want to look at it.

On one hand, when the perspective is in the hands of the abused teenager, the book is absolutely riveting.  He has a unique perspective and unique skill set and is just sort of fascinating to be with.  I found these chapters to be an interesting look at an angsty teenager.  I just couldn't put the book down when we were living his life.

But there are a lot of chapters devoted to fraud and covering up fraud and frankly, these got a little bit tedious after a bit. I was hoping we'd do more deep dive with Assad, Carl, and Rose over at Department Q, but we didn't really. There were a handful of scenes with them, but it was very much hands off with our traditional main characters. Carl was quite flat, with a few scenes in which he got emotional, but even those scenes would have played as absolutely confusing if you were a new reader.  Assad was so quiet he might as well have not even been there!  So, if you're going into this book with a thirst for the developing relationship of our trio, you're going to be disappointed. 

This book also adds another member to Department Q, a young officer who is there basically to be a spy for his dad's best friend, the new boss, who has a definite dislike of Carl and the Department Q crew.  Carl somehow manages to convince this kid to take his job seriously and stop reporting back to the boss all the ethically dubious actions the trio take in the course of their duties.  I am a bit interested to see how this new character interacts with our original team in future novels.

So, of course I'm going to be reading more. I like to think that this was Adler-Olsen's attempt at experimenting a little bit with the format  from a traditional cop solving mystery to international thriller and that it was a bit of a failed attempt. Fingers crossed that the next book in the series goes back to the old standby.