Expectation (novel)
Expectation. The Marko Effect (in the Danish original: Marco effekten ) is a thriller by the Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen . It was published in Denmark in December 2012 and in Germany in September 2013, where it reached number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list that same month . The novel is the fifth book about the "Special Department Q" with chief investigator Carl Mørck.
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Blurb
Marco is fifteen and hates his life in a clan whose members are forced into crime by their diabolical leader Zola. When Marco can no longer stand it one day, he makes a momentous decision: on his flight from Zola's men, he comes across a severely decayed man's corpse in a hole in the ground - and thus sets in motion a spiral of events that repeatedly endanger his life bring ...
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Fifteen-year-old Marco lives with his father in a thrown- together Sinti and Roma family who immigrated from Italy to Denmark. Their sect-like leader Zola (his uncle) directs the “ clan's ” criminal activities , which range from organized begging and pickpocketing in downtown Copenhagen to receiving stolen goods and contract killing.
“ For Marco, the day that a newspaper once described as the most boring day in the world was the day when the worst that could have happened to him: Zola's birth. Zola was the devil in human form. He, the leader of the clan, forced them to beg and steal, he beat and tortured them, he forbade them to go to school, he prevented by all means that they could lead a completely normal life. And now Zola had - ostensibly with God's help - swung herself up to dispose of them all. "
The intelligent and inquisitive Marco decides to flee and on his escape discovers a corpse buried by the "clan" in the forest and an African necklace, which he takes.
Without valid papers and stateless , he temporarily managed to find shelter with a gay couple and to earn a living by doing small work and pasting posters. While sticking up an advertising pillar , he discovers a photo of the deceased with the necklace. Tilde Kristoffersen, who suffered from Crohn's disease , had distributed a search note with the picture of her missing stepfather, William Stark, who had cared for her and provided treatment. William Stark is the corpse that the boy discovered on his escape in the forest near Regme. Marco is tracked down several times by the members of the gang, but he can always escape them and the police.
Rose Knudsen - an employee in the Q special department headed by Deputy Criminal Inspector Carl Mørck and his assistant Hafez el-Assad - also became aware of the case through the posters. Spurred on by the clues that Marco secretly passes on to the investigators in the course of the case, the investigators go on the trail of the murderers. The department is forcibly assigned Gordon Taylor as controller by the new acting head of the homicide squad, Lars Bjørn .
The motive for Stark's murder can ultimately be found in the fact that the employee of the Danish development aid ministry had managed to track down a large-scale fraud involving funds. His department head René E. Eriksen and two board members of a bank, Teis Snap and Jens Brage-Schmidt, had diverted millions into their own pockets with the help of their African helpers, which were supposed to benefit the Baka pygmy people in Cameroon . To cover up their fraud, they don't shy away from walking over dead bodies. They commission the "clan" of Marco's uncle to murder Stark.
When it emerges that the 15-year-old Marco might be able to bring the machinations of the masterminds to light, and then the police begin their investigations, the men become uneasy. In addition to the "clan" and its Eastern European accomplices, they also incite a gang of former child soldiers under the command of the unscrupulous Mammy on the boy. Besides, everyone tries to save their own skin and especially their own money. Therefore, Brage-Schmidt's bodyguard Boy - the real head behind the plot, as it turns out at the end - kills Snap and his wife and ultimately falls victim to Eriksen together with Brage-Schmidt. He faked his death and went to South America with the money - only to be shot on the street by a petty criminal a few years later.
When Marco has to watch Zola kill his father during the hunt for him, he realizes that he now finally has to testify to the police. He meets with Tilde Kristoffersen and they find the hiding place of Stark's documents that prove the fraud. But Tilde is kidnapped by Mammy, who demands that Marco be exchanged for the girl. The car chase that follows culminates on Pusher Street in the Free City of Christiania . The girl and the replaced Marco are freed and as a result the last open questions are cleared up.
reception
On NDR Kultur , Maren Ahring notes the “... mostly oppressive proximity to reality” in Adler-Olsen's novels. While in the previous novels the motive for the crime was always revenge, he has now “... apparently said goodbye to this idea - and that's a good thing. 'Expectation. The Marco effect is fresher, livelier and more pointed than its predecessors. ” Regarding the title, she quotes the author as follows: “ The Marco effect is the same as the butterfly effect . If a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, it has an effect in Yugoslavia. "
Christian Funke-Smolka writes on We Want Media that the novel is “... intelligent and exciting reading that succeeds in captivating the reader, entertaining them in an exciting way and at the same time stimulating thought. A great novel that I can recommend to everyone! "
The book is highly praised in many reviews and receives very good ratings:
“ In the previous four volumes, Adler-Olsen wrote himself under the skin of readers with his descriptions of cruelty, abuse of power and revenge, but he succeeds here with the desperate struggle of a young person who is running for his life. "Expectation" is a page turner in the best sense of the word, perhaps also Adler-Olsen's best book in this series to date. And: It is - as always - a very clever and very human one. "
“ As Adler-Olsen is used to from earlier thrillers such as“ Contempt ”or“ The Washington Decree ”, Mørck's zigzag investigation is not only exciting entertainment, but also a projection screen for social debates in Denmark: the immigration of criminal Eastern Europeans, for example - if you think of the Swedish Wallander crime thrillers, for example - many Scandinavians seem to be worried and Adler-Olsen is also quite critical of their consequences. On the other hand, the annoyance of the already EU-skeptical Danes over tax-financed bank rescue packages, which many citizens believe are flowing into the pockets of greedy and irresponsible bankers. "
“ It's breathtaking and ingenious how Adler-Olsen interweaves and spins the stories step by step, how he dramatically intensifies Marco's struggle for survival, how he brings Carl and his employees on the trail of crime, how he lets the three gentlemen tear themselves apart. If this thriller starts at a more leisurely pace - there is so much to explain and portray - it will soon pick up speed. And how! "
Jürgen Priester complains that in Adler-Olsen's “Strategy of the Open Plot”, in the fifth volume about the special department Q, there is only relatively little tension.
“ The reviewer simply misses out on case analysis and clarification as the heart of a crime novel. The weighting is no longer correct. A quickie on the office desk or the constant sprinkling of camel jokes increase the entertainment value, but at the same time diminish the essence of a detective story: the tension. "
Heiko Weckbrodt writes:
“ You can tell from his Marco, whose race with his pursuers is told in a very exciting way, but whose inner monologues often seem a bit constructed and inauthentic. "
Other volumes in the series
The novel Expectation is the fifth volume in the Carl Mørck Dezernat Q series.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Expectation was published in 2012 under the title Marco Effekten , German edition for the first time in 2013 by dtv, part 5 of the Carl-Mørck-Dezernat-Q series, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (September 13, 2012), ISBN 978-3423280204 .
- ↑ Jussi Adler-Olsen: Expectation, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3423280204 , pp. 91-92
- ↑ The trail leads to Africa ( Memento from October 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on NDR Kultur (accessed on September 22, 2013)
- ↑ We Want Media ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed September 22, 2013)
- ↑ Breathtaking and ingenious, ARD Book Fair, Nicole Rodriguez, September 24, 2013 ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ "Expectation": Raff bankers spark the Gypsy War in the new Adler-Olsen crime novel, Heiko Weckbrodt, September 27, 2013
- ↑ Breathtaking and ingenious, ARD Book Fair, Nicole Rodriguez, September 24, 2013 ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ »Don't expect too much!«, Jürgen Priester in Krimi-Couch, October 2013
- ↑ "Expectation": Raff bankers spark the Gypsy War in the new Adler-Olsen crime novel, Heiko Weckbrodt, September 27, 2013
