holy bleedin' lizards i'll be damned
Alternative title: Everything and not just the kitchen sink, but the entire IKEA kitchen display floor
Back in July, when lockdown measures eased up enough to excuse unecessary trips beyond the next supermarket, I went to my local coffee shop. It's a Munich-based chain which always has reading samples in the form of littel booklets around, with genres varying wildly from YA Romance to highbrow literature. When I was there, it was a Scandinavian Crime Novel called Victim 2117, which had a random katana on the cover design and look. Did I know it was probably going to be trash? Yes. Am I that easy? Also yes. The summary mentioned something about the book dealing with a threat of domestic terrorism, which is a dicey subject for Scandinavian lit to tackle for obvious reasons, but I had tokens on Audible to burn, so I thought, hey, can it be worse than what failte_aoife and I have come to expect from the genre?
Hahaha :') Haha :')
Following, all I'll do is list the amount of plot points going on in this one (1) book. Nothing more. I swear. This isn't troika, I'm not reinventing more than there is to the story.
To be balanced - yes, it is a later installment in a series, so I was prepared there'd be some plot points bleeding over from previous books. This, however, is no excuse for the absolute clusterfuck that awaited me.
I want to imagine that when drafting the next part of the series, the author had the following ideas on a slip of paper:
a) finally delve into Assad's backstory and reveal him to be a former elite soldier with a tragic past
b) capitalise on the refugee crisis, but badly so, by making some of them actual evil jihadists who commit a severe terror attack in Berlin while dISGUISED AS ORTHODOX JEWS
c) write about a shut-in weirdo who kills people with a samurai sword and wants to run amok, but not bc he's a right-wing nut, but because he's.... mad about the world not caring about refugees dying. or something.
It might be easiest to first go by characters and what's on their plate (a lot)
Carl
- police guy
- his girlfriend has severe depression after her daugther was killed in a previous book, gruesomely
- his girlfriend suddenly gets pregnant at 50 due to taking hormones for depression
- his ex-mother-in-law is dying
- his best ex-cop friend who is paralysed after a shooting on the job tries to get brain interface in Switzerland
Assad
- police guy
- loses both his boss/former commanding officer (to cancer) and his boss's brother/former comrade (to suicide)
- finds out victim 2117 from the mediterranean is the woman who helped him esape to Denmark and that she was murdered
- turns out to have lived a double life all along because he's NOT a Syrian refugee
- is actually an Iraqi refugee from the first Gulf War who grew up in Denmark
- joined the military and was put to work as a translator in the Iraq War
- helped bust out his boss's bro out of Abu Ghuraib, as you do
- ends up captured and put into Abu Ghuraib himself, survives endless torture etc. pp.
- manages to escape, wounding the EVUL™ interrogator severely
- his wife and children are abducted, he escapes, wallows in manpain™ since
- finds out his wife and one daughter is alive, so he can wallow in MORE mainpain about having left them behind
- constantly gives fortune cookie level words of wisdoms featuring camels bc hey it's not racism if our hero is a muslim
Rose
- police secretary
- has severe depression after being abducted and held captive in a previous book, gruesomely
- became a hoarder shut in for a while
- has a one night stand with Assad
Gordon
- police secretary
- exists?
- that's it, there was no more room to give him a dead/raped/traumatised gf as well I guess, so sad
Joan
- freelance writer
- starts the novel by wanting to commit suicide
- is reinspired to live by the noble desire to capitalise on human misery in the refugee crisis & becoming famous
- is made into a pawn by the EVUL™ interrogator to orchestrate the final showdown
- spends the entire second half of the book drugged and strapped to a wheelchair
- makes zero progress in terms of worldview tbh
Ghalib
- EVUL™
- did I mention he's EVUL™
- former Abu Ghuraib interrogator
- joined expy ISIS and plans a terror attack only to get back at Assad (bc he's EVUL™)
- walking personification of the AS YOU KNOW, BOB trope, constantly explaining everything to his followers as the plot needs it
- also in the habit of spouting fortune cookie level words of wisdoms featuring camels, but the EVUL™ version I guess
- dragged Assad's drugged wife and 2 daughers around all across literal war zones for years, taking great pains to keep them alive.... for revenge
- speaks in riddles, but like, Dan Brown level riddles (is2g one is like "we meet at the square where the pigeon flies low" and the police idiots for the longest time think it's about. actual pigeons. and spend tons of manhours looking into where pigeons life in Berlin I'm)
Alexander
- hikkikomori NEET
- hates his authoratitve parents
- an egoshooter fan because we haven't beaten that dead horse enough
- also ofc a samurai fanboy with a real katana (which he eventually tries to commit harakiri with, idk how)
- plans to go on a bloody rampage after reaching level 2117 in his game to... uh... honour the 2117th victim of the refugee crisis at the mediterranean
- calls the police to give them hints
- speaks in riddles, but like, Dan Brown level riddles
Staring in minor roles:
- Alexander's EVUL™ parents who both are cheaters
- Assad's traumatized and raped wife and daughters who get no lines bc why do props need lines
- Ghalib's posse of would-be jihadists who include not one but TWO radicalised European women who are hot which makes them being evil muslims even MORE EVUL™ and a German sharpshooter the country made a pariah who joined the jihadists who is ALSO dying of cancer
- Weber, a Bavarian state level secret service member who for some reason runs the entire operation even when it goes federal level bc that's how it works
- a random very gay very snobby Munich art critic and his young boy toy
- not taste, that role was not included
All of this was such a horrible, horrible mixture - I could easily tell the author wanted to be controversial by tackling both a Scandinavian young man running amok and the refugee crisis, but instead of focussing on the right-wing/incel indoctrination that drives real-life examples of the former and the misery and exploitation of the latter, wanted to put a TWIST on it, in the end confirming that yes the root of all evil is bad parenting and yes hashtag all refugees (are potential terrorists).
How this ever got past an editor with even a semblance of a brain, I don't know, but it definitely never saw a sensitivity reader, that much I'll tell you.
(As for the title of this entry - I followed up this literary disappointment with something short and breezy that popped up in recommended, Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs, and only after several chapters of First Person perspective realised that I had mixed up the Rizzoli & Isles and Tempe Brennan series and had never in fact read/listened to any of this franchise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Listening was a joy though because the narrator did a fantastic Southern Drawl which made even the occasional cringy 50-Shades-rememberance "Double crap!" quite fun. Also I'm sure the algorithm recommended it bc in the end it was about.... Appalachian exorcisms by rogue Catholics............ i'm sorry for who I am as a person but not for [stanning csi: vatican ok]
)
Back in July, when lockdown measures eased up enough to excuse unecessary trips beyond the next supermarket, I went to my local coffee shop. It's a Munich-based chain which always has reading samples in the form of littel booklets around, with genres varying wildly from YA Romance to highbrow literature. When I was there, it was a Scandinavian Crime Novel called Victim 2117, which had a random katana on the cover design and look. Did I know it was probably going to be trash? Yes. Am I that easy? Also yes. The summary mentioned something about the book dealing with a threat of domestic terrorism, which is a dicey subject for Scandinavian lit to tackle for obvious reasons, but I had tokens on Audible to burn, so I thought, hey, can it be worse than what failte_aoife and I have come to expect from the genre?
Hahaha :') Haha :')
Following, all I'll do is list the amount of plot points going on in this one (1) book. Nothing more. I swear. This isn't troika, I'm not reinventing more than there is to the story.
To be balanced - yes, it is a later installment in a series, so I was prepared there'd be some plot points bleeding over from previous books. This, however, is no excuse for the absolute clusterfuck that awaited me.
I want to imagine that when drafting the next part of the series, the author had the following ideas on a slip of paper:
a) finally delve into Assad's backstory and reveal him to be a former elite soldier with a tragic past
b) capitalise on the refugee crisis, but badly so, by making some of them actual evil jihadists who commit a severe terror attack in Berlin while dISGUISED AS ORTHODOX JEWS
c) write about a shut-in weirdo who kills people with a samurai sword and wants to run amok, but not bc he's a right-wing nut, but because he's.... mad about the world not caring about refugees dying. or something.
It might be easiest to first go by characters and what's on their plate (a lot)
Carl
- police guy
- his girlfriend has severe depression after her daugther was killed in a previous book, gruesomely
- his girlfriend suddenly gets pregnant at 50 due to taking hormones for depression
- his ex-mother-in-law is dying
- his best ex-cop friend who is paralysed after a shooting on the job tries to get brain interface in Switzerland
Assad
- police guy
- loses both his boss/former commanding officer (to cancer) and his boss's brother/former comrade (to suicide)
- finds out victim 2117 from the mediterranean is the woman who helped him esape to Denmark and that she was murdered
- turns out to have lived a double life all along because he's NOT a Syrian refugee
- is actually an Iraqi refugee from the first Gulf War who grew up in Denmark
- joined the military and was put to work as a translator in the Iraq War
- helped bust out his boss's bro out of Abu Ghuraib, as you do
- ends up captured and put into Abu Ghuraib himself, survives endless torture etc. pp.
- manages to escape, wounding the EVUL™ interrogator severely
- his wife and children are abducted, he escapes, wallows in manpain™ since
- finds out his wife and one daughter is alive, so he can wallow in MORE mainpain about having left them behind
- constantly gives fortune cookie level words of wisdoms featuring camels bc hey it's not racism if our hero is a muslim
Rose
- police secretary
- has severe depression after being abducted and held captive in a previous book, gruesomely
- became a hoarder shut in for a while
- has a one night stand with Assad
Gordon
- police secretary
- exists?
- that's it, there was no more room to give him a dead/raped/traumatised gf as well I guess, so sad
Joan
- freelance writer
- starts the novel by wanting to commit suicide
- is reinspired to live by the noble desire to capitalise on human misery in the refugee crisis & becoming famous
- is made into a pawn by the EVUL™ interrogator to orchestrate the final showdown
- spends the entire second half of the book drugged and strapped to a wheelchair
- makes zero progress in terms of worldview tbh
Ghalib
- EVUL™
- did I mention he's EVUL™
- former Abu Ghuraib interrogator
- joined expy ISIS and plans a terror attack only to get back at Assad (bc he's EVUL™)
- walking personification of the AS YOU KNOW, BOB trope, constantly explaining everything to his followers as the plot needs it
- also in the habit of spouting fortune cookie level words of wisdoms featuring camels, but the EVUL™ version I guess
- dragged Assad's drugged wife and 2 daughers around all across literal war zones for years, taking great pains to keep them alive.... for revenge
- speaks in riddles, but like, Dan Brown level riddles (is2g one is like "we meet at the square where the pigeon flies low" and the police idiots for the longest time think it's about. actual pigeons. and spend tons of manhours looking into where pigeons life in Berlin I'm)
Alexander
- hikkikomori NEET
- hates his authoratitve parents
- an egoshooter fan because we haven't beaten that dead horse enough
- also ofc a samurai fanboy with a real katana (which he eventually tries to commit harakiri with, idk how)
- plans to go on a bloody rampage after reaching level 2117 in his game to... uh... honour the 2117th victim of the refugee crisis at the mediterranean
- calls the police to give them hints
- speaks in riddles, but like, Dan Brown level riddles
Staring in minor roles:
- Alexander's EVUL™ parents who both are cheaters
- Assad's traumatized and raped wife and daughters who get no lines bc why do props need lines
- Ghalib's posse of would-be jihadists who include not one but TWO radicalised European women who are hot which makes them being evil muslims even MORE EVUL™ and a German sharpshooter the country made a pariah who joined the jihadists who is ALSO dying of cancer
- Weber, a Bavarian state level secret service member who for some reason runs the entire operation even when it goes federal level bc that's how it works
- a random very gay very snobby Munich art critic and his young boy toy
- not taste, that role was not included
All of this was such a horrible, horrible mixture - I could easily tell the author wanted to be controversial by tackling both a Scandinavian young man running amok and the refugee crisis, but instead of focussing on the right-wing/incel indoctrination that drives real-life examples of the former and the misery and exploitation of the latter, wanted to put a TWIST on it, in the end confirming that yes the root of all evil is bad parenting and yes hashtag all refugees (are potential terrorists).
How this ever got past an editor with even a semblance of a brain, I don't know, but it definitely never saw a sensitivity reader, that much I'll tell you.
(As for the title of this entry - I followed up this literary disappointment with something short and breezy that popped up in recommended, Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs, and only after several chapters of First Person perspective realised that I had mixed up the Rizzoli & Isles and Tempe Brennan series and had never in fact read/listened to any of this franchise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Listening was a joy though because the narrator did a fantastic Southern Drawl which made even the occasional cringy 50-Shades-rememberance "Double crap!" quite fun. Also I'm sure the algorithm recommended it bc in the end it was about.... Appalachian exorcisms by rogue Catholics............ i'm sorry for who I am as a person but not for [stanning csi: vatican ok]
)