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The Marco Effect is the fifth Department Q book, and it is the entry where Jussi Adler-Olsen pushes the series into its most overtly political territory. The case starts with Marco, a 15-year-old Roma boy in Copenhagen who has run away from a clan of relatives who use the city's children as picket-pocketing labor. What Marco knows, accidentally, involves the death of a Danish bureaucrat in Africa and a much larger story about development aid and corruption.
The book is structurally ambitious. The Marco chapters are some of the most affecting Adler-Olsen has written, a portrait of a kid trying to survive on the streets of a city that does not know what to do with him. The Department Q investigation runs in parallel, and Carl, Assad, and Rose are all on point.
The pacing sags in the middle as the African subplot takes longer than it probably should to converge. The closing third makes up for it. Four stars. Read in series order.
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