Library Limelights 172

Jussi Adler-Olsen. The Washington Decree. 2006, 2009. USA: Random House Large Print, 2018.

Does it take a Dane to effectively expose government inconsistencies and vulnerabilities in America? Note: this book was written well before the current US president was elected. Fictional new President Jansen takes office despite recent personal tragedies – two of them – in his life; his goal is to make America safe again. Loyal campaign worker, Doggie (Dorothy) Rogers, earns a White House job along with Wesley Barefoot who becomes the Press Secretary. But chaos starts with resignations and assassinations; Doggie's father is arrested and convicted of killing the president's wife, to wait on death row. The Washington Decree refers to broad presidential executive powers that supercede Congress and the Judiciary. In an appendix Adler-Olsen lists them as they currently exist along with the dire implications of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) legislation.

A state of emergency and fear become the norm for White House staff and the country in general as Jansen rams his reforms through, believing in long-term good, yet oblivious to the immediate social disintegration. All prisoners in federal institutions are released to rehabilitate drug addicts (go figure). Road blocks disrupt transportation and food supplies. The press have been fully muzzled. Militia groups are attacking the military. The evil behind the president becomes evident to any reader; later on, an overly-long exposition is puzzlingly redundant. Adler-Olsen's agenda is clear but his plot structure is not. Timeline is vital to the story but is too often confusing. Most characters are two-dimensional. The wheels are falling off the tale by the time the British delegation is introduced. This is the author who writes the (much more "together") Department Q thrillers. The Washington Decree is an ambitious, earnest attempt at a serious cautionary dystopian threat but some elements defy the required credibility.

One-liners:

▪ This was business and politics in a nutshell, and Doggie's father cracked these kinds of nuts with his bare hands. (33)

▪ "Did you know that everything you say in this building is recorded on tape?" (153)

▪ In the course of twenty-four hours Congress was effectively emasculated, and emergency executive powers and presidential decrees became the order of the day. (207-8)

▪ The procedure followed to the letter a series of presidential decrees that FEMA had worked up years ago but that no one had ever believed would be put into practice on such a scale. (255)

▪ The air was crackling with tension like the moment before the cyanide pellet falls into the bowl of acid. (258)

▪ He'd earned himself a bachelor of arts in bullshit, an MA in indiscretion. (388)

▪ "If he could lie about a little detail like that, what couldn't he lie about?" (544)

Wesley's job:

He had no particular expenses, was one of the most desirable bachelors in town, had a private chauffeur at his bidding, and so far the press adored the White House's new, young spokesman. He loved all of it. He led a truly privileged life—almost the life he'd dreamed of.

Almost.

Because, if he put his ear to the ground, something didn't sound right. There was a serpent hissing somewhere in paradise. A disquieting atmosphere was spreading, growing day by day from behind closed doors in the White House. (68-9)

Presidential vision:

"So this is about control?"

"If we seriously want to change things—yes!"

Lerner nodded as though he'd heard it all before. "The law-and-order proposal states that it can become necessary to override democratic principles. Are you willing to do this, Mr. President?"

"If necessary."

"Censor the media?"

"Yes."

"Forbid people to bear arms?"

"No. That goes against the Second Amendment," came Jansen's measured reply.

"But forbid them to buy ammunition, am I right?"

"Yes. The Second Amendment doesn't forbid that."

"And you'd go against the courts and grant amnesty to thousands of convicted criminals?"

"Yes, that, too. We must give the out-of-prison resocialization program very high priority." (155)

Between a rock and ...

She looked at the floor. "What are you going to use my ID for? You'll never get into the White House with it, if that's what you think."

"Names and pictures can be changed if necessary. And it may become necessary, so shut up. Or maybe we'll send you in."

Then the cell phone rang and the man took it out of his pocket.

Doggie froze. "Don't answer it," she whispered. "Right now they know approximately where we are, but not exactly. You'll be helping them trap us. Turn it off! Now!" (641-2)

Belinda Bauer. Finders Keepers. 2012. USA: Grove Press, 2017.

Reynolds and Rice are the cops who have to deal with missing children in a small English town. Shipcott is scared; motive and suspects are incomprehensible; parents band together for support. Policeman Jonas Holly is still recovering from a breakdown over his wife's murder but is sent back to work. Sensitive teenager Steven dislikes Holly from prior encounters but the two end up living the ultimate nightmare together. The narration covers several perspectives, all well developed from youngsters to sorrowing adults and the inner workings of detective personalities.

Then ... halfway through, the criminal is revealed and we are almost in an alternate world. Revenge motivated the first kidnapping, leading to madness and utter cruelty. No traces of the missing Jess, Charlie, Maisie, Kylie, then Steven. Will they be located, dead or alive? Will the police find the clues they need? Will Holly redeem himself in suspicious eyes? Suspense builds unbearably. Bauer has a perfect touch on everything — plot, characters, and expression. As psychological thrillers go, it's a true winner. Loving the pub name, "Rest And Be Thankful"!

One-liners:

▪ Inside, the house was furnished with a surfeit of money and a dearth of taste. (20)

▪ Marvel had lived by his instincts, his hunches, his gut ‒ and Reynolds had despised him with a passion worthy of opera. (97-8)

▪ Ken hoped it wasn't someone who would report him for leaving the children alone while he took a piss. (160)

▪ They hated him, but he was all they had ‒ and they feared his absence even more than they feared his presence. (313)

Two-liners:

▪ The voice was Mr Holly's, but not. It was flat and harsh and inky black, and Steven felt a change in the warm night air as if somewhere God had left a door open and the cold had rushed in. (196)

▪ Jonas stood up, then winced as something tugged him back down. He put his hand to his throat and felt the collar. (284)

Depression:

He'd become so used to silence since Lucy had died that he'd forgotten how stressful noise could be. How stressful talking and people could be. The thought that he'd once talked to people every day seemed impossible to him now. And the idea that he would have to get used to it again was sobering.

He wasn't sure he could.

Jonas expelled a long, shuddering breath that he felt he might have drawn in hours ago when Charlie Peach first went missing. Everything after that point was hazy to him ‒ a fairground blur of panic and shouting and movement and guilt. (119)

Media pouncing:

Three children gone in the space of a fortnight.

The Sun called him the Pied Piper, this man who was spiriting the children of Exmoor away, right under the noses of their guardians, and the other tabloids fell on the name with glee. Even the broadsheets picked up on it, although they sniffily referred to it as "the case some are calling the Pied Piper," which meant they could use the name while somehow maintaining a dignified distance from it.

Either way, Reynolds found in unhelpful. The name conjured up a damning image of the police stupidly failing to spot an endless crocodile of children being danced away across the moor by a man in a jester's outfit playing a tin whistle. (121)

Old-school misogyny:

Reynolds had always felt he had a great kinship with women. Men were threatened by his brains and often responded with hostility. DCI Marvel had been a case in point. But women were generally far happier to let him do the thinking for them, while he encouraged them to shine in supporting roles.

"There's no I in team," he was fond of telling them. It went down terribly well.

Most of the time. (253)

Parental attitude change:

Part of him ‒ the ever-decreasing part that was in denial ‒ was still hoping that Jess's disappearance was a petulant teenaged prank. Even the thought of Jess running off with a much older boyfriend was preferable to the idea that she'd been abducted.

Since she'd started to get breasts a year earlier, John Took had lain awake on many a night worrying about the kind of boys who might lust after his daughter. Boys who were too old, boys with tattoos and nose-rings, boys without jobs, boys who were only after one thing.

Now, awake through the night again, he was astonished to find that he actually hoped she was off in some grubby B&B being ravished by an old lech or a pierced punk ‒ if only it meant she was not being raped and murdered. Or was already lying dead in a field somewhere, waiting to be found by some random dog-walker. (310)

Åsa Larsson. Until Thy Wrath Be Past. 2008. USA: SilverOak/Sterling Publishing, 2011.

Going to Kiruna in Sweden again is like visiting comfortable old friends. Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson has settled well into her job and is loving her deceased grandmother's community. She becomes deeply involved when two young people are lost in a dive search for a missing Second World War airplane. But no one knows where they went or why, except the reader. Only one body turns up, in the wrong place. Anna-Maria Mella is again the lead detective, torn by the alienation of her partner, Stalnacke. Pervading the atmosphere is the hostility of the Krekula family, prominent in the trucker business for decades. Here is an instance where (always in italics) a ghostly voice ‒ a device that I generally dislike ‒ is especially effective, adding an impressive lyrical quality.

Gradually we come to know various personalities ‒ suspects and police alike. One of them is a very angry man who has terrorized his gifted older son and spoiled the younger one who now runs the family business. Rebecka is ambivalent about her long-distance romance, hardly aware yet that a local man provides her with a more copacetic companionship. Some of these northern Nordics have the second sight, and it plays well into the plot. For sure I am following the further adventures of Kiruna district's law and order forces.

One-liners:

▪ Do I always need to cry in order to be consoled? she said to herself. (69)

▪ He looked a right mess at my funeral. (147)

Two-liners:

▪ "But she was my best friend. An eighty-year-old and a teenager." (42)

▪ "I don't usually allow strangers in my house," she said. "You never know." (60)

▪ Spare me from ending up in a dayroom with worn-out, incontinent old folk. Spare me from needing to have my ass wiped, from sitting parked in front of a television surrounded by staff with shrill voices and bad backs. (166)

▪ He will search through the Bible in his cottage and see if he can find that line. "My heart within me is desolate." (193)

The cottage of Rebecka's grandmother is home:

I need all this, she thought. I am so many difficult people. The little three-year-old, starved of love; the ice-cold lawyer; the lone wolf; and the person who longs to do crazy things again, who longs to escape into the craziness. It is good to feel small beneath the sparkling northern lights, small beside the mighty river. Nature is so close to us up here. My troubles and difficulties just shrivel up. I like being insignificant.

I like living up here with lining paper on the shelves and spiders in the corners, and a broom to sweep the floor with, she thought. I do not want to be a guest and a stranger. Never again. (17)

Regrets:

His eyes filled with tears.

"I never should have said anything to her. I just wanted to make myself interesting. I wanted her to think it was fun to talk to me. It's no fun, damn it all, being on my own all the time. It's all my fault."

Once outside again, Martinsson took a deep breath.

As Strindberg said, she thought, you have to feel sorry for people. I don't want to die alone. (146)

Bully:

Kerrtu Krekula continues making pancakes with a grim expression on her face while Isak Krekula lays down the law in the kitchen.

"I want you to be quite clear that I sent that schoolmaster of yours packing," he bellows at Hjalmar Krekula. "I'll be damned if a son of mine is going to become a fucking walking calculator, and I made sure he understood that. Math, eh? Who the fuck do you think you are? Too snooty to work in the trucking business, is that it? Not good enough for your lordship? I'll have you know that it's the hauling business that has put food on your table for your entire life."

He gasps for breath, as if his fury is well on the way to choking him, as if it were a pillow over his mouth. (175-6)

Close to nature:

Why should one have to worry about things that happened in the past? When his father held his head under the icy water. That was fifty years ago. He never thinks about it; why would he start now?

His eyes close. The snow sighs in the forest, made weary by the coming of spring. The sun is roasting hot. Hjalmar dozes off in the warmth of the shelter.

He is woken up by a presence. Opens his eyes and at first sees only a shadow blocking out the sun. Shaggy and black.

Like a shot he is wide awake. A bear. (192)