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The Alphabet House is the Jussi Adler-Olsen novel that almost no one buys based on his Department Q reputation and that almost everyone is surprised by when they do. Originally published in Danish in 1997, well before Department Q, it is a World War II historical novel about two British air-force officers shot down over Germany who escape into a Nazi psychiatric hospital by pretending to be wounded SS soldiers.
The premise alone is fantastic. The execution is uneven. The hospital section, which is the heart of the book, is genuinely harrowing and well-researched. The postwar section, which makes up the second half, slips occasionally into thriller-plot machinery that the first half had earned the right to skip.
Four stars on balance. This is essential for completists and recommended to anyone interested in WW2 psychiatric history, which the book takes more seriously than it had to. New Adler-Olsen readers should still start with The Keeper of Lost Causes.
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The Keeper of Lost Causes
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The first Department Q novel. Detective Carl Morck goes down to the basement and finds a five-year-old missing-politician case. The series begins here.
The Purity of Vengeance
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The Absent one
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The second Department Q book. An old boarding-school case the Danish elite would prefer stayed cold.
The Marco Effect
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The fifth Department Q novel. A Roma boy on the run from his family is the only witness to something the Danish foreign ministry is hiding.
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