As a reader who has spent decades reading books by and about white men, I really did enjoy this book. It was fun reading a crime thriller set in a country other than Britain or the US. The story was interesting and presented a set of truly bad 'bad guys' with just enough of a twist that one might root for the investigator or for the least bad baddie. However, as a woman, I found Carl rather hard to like. He's so unprofessional in his relations with his female coworkers that I lost a lot of respect for him right from the start. Certainly it is not just Danish investigators who act sexist at work, but because the reader is seeing through Carl's perspective a lot, we get to 'enjoy' his admiration of his assistant's butt and the way he treats he as if she is incompetent simply because she is female. I have only read this one book in this series, so maybe Carl is just as awful to everyone, but in this book he comes across as sexist. I also have issues with Assad, Carl's trusty non-white companion, a sort of modern, Middle-Eastern version of Tanto, available for comic relief and to say just the right things at just the right times to land both him and Carl in deep trouble. Assad adds to the racial diversity of the story, just as the Somali no-quite-slaves and the Asian laundry girls do, but the way Assad's character was portrayed bugged me.Last in my litany of gripes was the bit about how Carl and Assad land themselves in the grand predicament we all know by halfway through the book has to happen. Rabid fox? Deadly crossbow toys? Potentially deadly hunt? Of course our 'hero' has to land himself in the middle of it somehow. But the sudden bout of impatience, blind assumptions, and stupidity that causes Carl to be led by Assad into that hunt seem awfully contrived. Surely there could have been other, more evidence-based reasons these two men could have decided a sneaky visit to the hunt was justified.Still, I did like this book, enough to only dock one star from its rating here. And, I might read other books by this author, if only because I still like reading foreign crime thrillers enough to forgive Carl's many shortcomings. Even better than the first episode of the Department Q series! While the plot is not really new (a band of rich and powerful sociopaths pleasing their violent desires simply because they can), the story remains thrilling till the final stand-off. Morck and Assad form a very entertaining and diverse team and also the new character Rose fits in quite well into a cast of characters that has a lot of a disfunctional family.
What do You think about Zabójcy Bażantów (2011)?
Great mystery. I enjoyed the different points of views presented.
—Mayabelle
Good read, very good series. Good Nordic crime. Now for book 3
—Liz
Liked it but the writing was not as sharp as Nesbo.
—dan
Another amazing book by Jussi Adler-Olsen
—wgibson
