This was an interesting book to read. In some parts, it was incredibly slow, while in others, (notably the end) it was a veritable page turner that I couldn't put down.
The premise sounded promising enough for me to pick it up at the library. In World War II, a pair of British pilots are shot down over Germany and to survive, they steal the identities of two high ranking SS officers being sent to a mental institution deep in Germany. Once in the institution, they have to maintain their sanity while convincing the nurses and doctors of their insanity. Oh, and some of the other patients may also be faking insanity, for reasons not yet clear.
Sounds interesting doesn't it? I would add that to the read pile based on the description. (Which, obviously I did.)
And it did start off interesting. It was obvious that the author, Jussi Adler-Olsen, had done plenty of research. In fact, Adler-Olsen (in a note in the beginning of the book) said that his father was psychiatrist who worked in Danish mental hospitals in the 1950's. So he knows what he's talking about.
The "pilots getting shot down" part was pretty exciting, as was there attempts to evade the German patrols. Even the first few days in the mental hospital were edge of the seat type stuff as they struggled with their deception. One quickly realizes that a mental hospital is probably a great place to hide out, because basically anything goes. For example, only one of the pilots speaks German. That might be a problem in a regular hospital, because his blank, uncomprehending looks when spoken too by the doctors and nurses are exactly what is expected of someone with mental issues. Also, it's easier to explain the lack of physical ailments.
But then you run into the same problems as were covered in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Pretending to be insane is pretty hard work. And that's when it starts getting slow. The book spends probably a third of the pages inside the heads of the two pilots. They can't speak and they can hardly move because they don't want to appear to able. So they just lay there. Nothing happens for a long time, but the author wants the reader to experience that time. It picks up a little because one of the pilots starts to suspect that others in the institution are faking as well. So there's this weird cat and mouse game where the two groups are trying to force the others to do something that will prove to the hospital administrators that they're not insane, but do it in a way that they don't also implicate themselves.
It was at this stage that I was close to putting the book down for good. I could only read a few pages at a time, and then I'd get depressed looking at how many pages I had left. I'm glad I stuck with it though, because one of the pilots manages to escape. At this point, the book jumps 30 years (I don't remember exactly, but it was something like that) into the future. This pilot is now a wealthy doctor, but is haunted by the fate of his friend and co-pilot, who he had to leave in the hospital. A chance encounter with someone sparks a renewed interest and sets off a chain of events that reminded me a lot of the movie Serendipity.
I make that comparison because the author switches points of view to a bunch of the connected characters as their arcs slowly spiral together. As the omniscient reader you see how they all interact, but the characters keep missing slightly missing each other or meeting but not knowing it. At this stage the plot was moving pretty rapidly and it became something I couldn't put down. The only problem was that with all the character switching, it kind of became hard to keep track of who was who.
Apparently Adler-Olsen is well known for his "Department Q" series. Although this book wasn't a part of that group, it was good enough to make me want to see what those books are about. But it wasn't good enough that I'm going to run out tomorrow to find them.
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