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The Alphabet House Written by Jussi Adler-Olsen Reviewed by Tony Nielsen
PLOT TWISTS: Jussi Adler-Olsen and The Alphabet House. medication and worse. While Bryan, who speaks German, manages to maintain some sense of (secret) normality, James retreats into a very dark place. After months in this hell hole and with intimidation from a trio of fellow “malingerers”, Bryan manages to escape and makes it back to the Allied lines. The story then moves forward nearly 30 years, and finds Bryan
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The Alphabet House – an exceptional thriller I’ve read a number of Jussi’s books and this one is exceptional and very different from the Scandinavian-based thrillers that I have read previously. The setting is (initially) during World War 2, involving James and Bryan, best mates since childhood, and now together on a mission above Germany in 1944. Their plane is attacked but they manage to parachute out of it, although James is wounded. They’re as deep as you can get in enemy territory, so they resort to a risky but ultimately successful ruse by chambering aboard a hospital train taking injured and traumatised Nazi troops to a hospital. In so doing, they kill two Germans and assume their identities. While this works, they end up in a special unit for mentally impaired soldiers. As a result, they’re subjected to shock treatment, radical
Friday October 10 2014
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as a very wealthy and successful doctor and businessman. He hasn’t been back to Germany since his escape but on a whim, decides to see if he can find out anything about his friend, who he had to leave behind because of the state that he was in. The next chapters are charged with electricity and plot twists that make The Alphabet House a really special read.
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A thriller from the crook’s perspective
The Wolf Written by Lorenzo Carcaterra Reviewed by Tony Nielsen
The Wolf was my first read on Kindle as I set out on a fiveweek journey around Europe. I enjoyed the experience more than I thought I would, although nothing will ever replace the real thing. The Wolf is an excellent read and Lorenzo Carcaterra writes a crisp, well-paced thriller. What struck me in particular is that we don’t get to read many thrillers written from the crook’s perspective, which is a point of
difference here and which works well. The main character is a high level crime boss and very likeable. His comrades in arms are other operators in the same business, out to make a buck or a billion at others’ expense. His world is turned upside down when his wife and two daughters are killed by terrorists on a plane. He then realises that targeting them for revenge will be good for business, as their activities are also enemies to both his legit businesses as well as his criminal ones.
Mankell at his best
Italian Shoes Written by Henning Mankell Reviewed by Tony Nielsen
As anyone who knows me will be aware I am a huge Henning Mankell fan and I am pretty sure that this was the last book of his that I hadn’t read. This is not a Kurt Wallander story but a stand-alone dramatic novel with a heavy emphasis on aging, death, grief and taking responsibility (or not) for one’s
actions. Mankell drills deeply into these concepts, and while that means the going can be heavy, the writing is superb. It’s about a 60-something guy who has chosen isolation as his reaction to a catastrophic mistake he made as a surgeon. He has dealt with his isolation stoically but then a woman he abandoned decades earlier appears to visit, and ultimately to make him aware that he has a daughter.
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