Not a bad book, actually.

Copenhagen Deputy Detective Superintendent Carl Mørck returns from vacation to discover that his tiny cold case unit, Department Q, has been reshuffled, and a citizen’s complaint has reopened a 20-year-old case on which all the relevant documents have disappeared. …

Kirkus

Six rich students are suspected of killing Lisbet Jørgeneon and her twin brother two decades ago.

But they were never seriously investigated as a young man admitted he had murdered the two. And is still in prison.

Reluctantly at first, Carl (the jerk) and his likable Syrian assistant, Hafez el-Assad, AND his new secretary, Rose Knudsen start building a case against the students, some of whom are now rich and influential.

A popular Danish film was adapted from the book.

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I don’t know why I keep reading this Department Q books.

The lead detective, Carl Mørck, is just a jerk.

I do like his sidekick, Assad.

This 3rd book in the series (2013) has an evil serial killer of children who preys on extremely religious families. They trust God more than the police.

Jussi Adler-Olsen is Denmark’s #1 crime writer. The films based on his books are popular.

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Crooked House is one of Agatha Christie‘s favourites of her books.

I’d agree. This is a good one.

An unreliable narrator. It kept me guessing.

Towards the end of the Second World War, Charles Hayward is in Cairo and falls in love with Sophia Leonides, a smart, successful Englishwoman who works for the Foreign Office. They put off getting engaged until the end of the war when they will be reunited in England.

Hayward returns home and reads a death notice in The Times: Sophia’s grandfather, the wealthy entrepreneur Aristide Leonides, has died, aged 85.

Due to the war, the whole family has been living with him in a sumptuous but ill-proportioned house called “Three Gables”, the crooked house of the title.

The autopsy reveals that Leonides was poisoned with his own eserine-based eye medicine via an insulin injection.

Sophia tells Charles that she can’t marry him until the matter is cleared up. …

I haven’t seen the 2017 movie adaptation.

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Excellent.

Adler-Olsen is a Danish crime fiction writer best known for his Department Q series.

The first book in the series is The Keeper of Lost Causes. (2013)

Carl Mørck used to be one of Denmark’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself.

So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of cold cases for company.

His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead. But she isn’t dead…yet.

I particularly enjoyed Mørck’s sidekick, Assad.

It was adapted in a 2013 Danish film.

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I really enjoyed Kenneth Branagh‘s 2nd Agatha Christie adaptation ➙ Death on the Nile (2022).

Belfast was excellent, as well.

So I was keen to see Haunting in Venice (2023), loosely based on Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie.

Though not as good as Nile, I do have a lot of respect for the 3rd film. It feels true to the Agatha Christie formula.

Film students should study the cinematography and audio.

Branagh portrays the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. An ego trip.

Tina Fey is Ariadne Oliver, Poirot’s friend and a crime novelist (something like Christie).

Having lost faith in God and humanity, Detective Hercule Poirot lives in retirement in post-war Venice, employing ex-police officer Vitale Portfoglio as a bodyguard.

On Halloween, novelist Ariadne Oliver convinces Poirot to attend a séance at the palazzo of opera singer Rowena Drake and help expose medium Joyce Reynolds as a fraud. …

Gathering the other guests together, Poirot exposes _______ as the murderer. …

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Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril (b. 1966) and Alexander Ahndoril (b. 1967), authors of the Joona Linna series.  …

… Detective Superintendent at the Swedish police’s National Operations Department …

The Hypnotist is book #1. (2009)

This couple are recently the best-selling authors – Swedish or international – in Sweden, across all categories.

I do like the Detective Inspector Joona Linna.

Personally I found this book a bit slow. There is some repetition that could have been avoided.

GET AN EDITOR is what I’m saying.

I have those same complaints with many of the Nordic Noir books—also called Scandinavian crime fiction. It was true of the Dragon Tattoo books. True of Hypnotist.

A Swedish film adaptation was made in 2012 by Lasse Hallström.

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In Norway, I AM reading Nesbø, the most popular Norwegian novelist of all time.

He actually is quite a sophisticated writer. Many plot twists.

Most of his characters are dislikable. And most of the victims tortured and murdered are women. Cliche.

Snowman is arguably his most famous book.

The Snowman (Norwegian: Snømannen) is a 2007 novel by Norwegian crime-writer Jo Nesbø. It is the seventh entry in his Harry Hole series. …

Looking through cold cases, Hole realises that he is tracking Norway’s earliest known serial killer.

Most of the victims vanished after the first snowfall of winter, and snowmen were found near each scene.

Further digging leads Hole and his team, including newcomer Katrine Bratt, to suspect that paternity issues with the children of the victims may be a motive for the murders.  …

Click PLAY or watch some background on the movie on YouTube.

This is the murder mystery adapted for the 3rd Hercule Poirot film by Kenneth Branagh , retitled as A Haunting in Venice.

I’m surprised as this book seems a bit simplistic compared with others in the Christie archive.

It begins at a Hallowe’en party.

A girl at the party claims to have witnessed a murder, which at the time she was too young to realize was such.

Though disbelieved by those around her, the girl herself is drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket and Poirot must solve a two-pronged mystery: who killed the girl, and what if anything did she witness? …

wikipedia

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