Sorry, a German thriller
written by Zoran Drvenkar, opens with a really nasty and very brutal sequence of
violence, but after that, nothing much else happens. If any genre of literature
is overrated while still being okay, it is the European mystery genre, made
popular by the likes of Jo Nesbo and Steig Larsson. These stories are always
brutal, long and rife with cultural quirks. But for some reason, I have never
found anything profound or moving in these books, and that applies even more so
to this book. I think I just prefer my American crime stories to anything
across the pond. The violence in books like this are gruesome and creative, but
it treats them casually and lessens the effects it has on the people in the
story, which you won’t find in books like Lehane’s Mystic River or Pelecanos’
The Turnaround. Some people like it, and I won’t fault them for it, but to me,
it tends to veer off into a place that is tawdry and tasteless. After the
brutal opening involving a very large nail and a very unlucky woman, we meet
our quartet of losers, drifting through middle adulthood, who stumble onto an
idea that might net them millions: take a poor schmuck who doesn’t have the courage
to apologize, and do it for him. It’s a morally corrupt, but successful way to
make money that ultimately leads them into the clutches of the person who
commits the crime at the beginning. I give the book credit for not taking easy
ways out, especially when the device they were using (writing the killer’s
section in second person) didn’t lead to where I thought it was going to, but
the plight of these four misfits never seems urgent, even when someone major
dies, and after a dismal climax, I was left feeling unsatisfied, but not that I
had wasted my time.
Rating: 3/5
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