The exception - BookWyrm

502 pages

English language

Published Jan. 13, 2006 by Nan A. Talese, Doubleday.

ISBN:: 978-0-385-51629-7
OCLC Number:: 70407821

(1 review)

A bestseller throughout Europe, THE EXCEPTION is a gripping dissection of the nature of evil and of the paranoia and obsessions that drive ordinary people to commit unthinkable acts. Four women work together for a small nonprofit in Copenhagen that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe that they are being stalked by Mirko Zigic, a Serbian torturer and war criminal, whom they have recently profiled in their articles. As the tensions mount among the women, their suspicions turn away from Zigic and toward each other. The threats increase and soon the office becomes a battlefield in which each of the women's move is suspect. Their obsession turns into a witch hunt as they resort to bullying and victimization. Yet these are people who daily analyze cases of appalling cruelty on a worldwide scale, and who are intimate with the psychology of evil. …

A bestseller throughout Europe, THE EXCEPTION is a gripping dissection of the nature of evil and of the paranoia and obsessions that drive ordinary people to commit unthinkable acts. Four women work together for a small nonprofit in Copenhagen that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe that they are being stalked by Mirko Zigic, a Serbian torturer and war criminal, whom they have recently profiled in their articles. As the tensions mount among the women, their suspicions turn away from Zigic and toward each other. The threats increase and soon the office becomes a battlefield in which each of the women's move is suspect. Their obsession turns into a witch hunt as they resort to bullying and victimization. Yet these are people who daily analyze cases of appalling cruelty on a worldwide scale, and who are intimate with the psychology of evil. The cruelty which the women have described from a safe distance is now revealed in their own world. They discover that none of them is exactly the person she seems to be. And then they learn that Interpol has traced Mirko Zigic to Denmark.THE EXCEPTION is a unique and intelligent thriller, heralding Christian Jungersen as a gifted storyteller and keen observer of the human psyche.

8 editions

Moorlock reviewed The exception by Christian Jungersen

Review of 'The exception' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It’s got a lot going for it. You know early on that it is going to be making brutal office politics a microcosm reflecting elements of large-scale genocidal outrages. The office in question being a center for genocide studies allows for parallels to be drawn pretty explicitly.

This could get heavy-handed, but [a:Christian Jungersen|163050|Christian Jungersen|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] does a pretty good job keeping it interesting and poignant without drumming it in too harshly.

And the office politics bullying is done with a keen eye. I got the same sort of knots in my stomach that I get when I watch the intimate psychological savagery in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

But Jungersen spends far too much effort trying to make his book into a sexy Hollywood-thriller-to-be. Dramatic murders, mysterious international hoodlums, near-death chase scenes, handwaving computer espionage, and a whodunit with lots of twists and turns. If I want that sort …

It’s got a lot going for it. You know early on that it is going to be making brutal office politics a microcosm reflecting elements of large-scale genocidal outrages. The office in question being a center for genocide studies allows for parallels to be drawn pretty explicitly.

This could get heavy-handed, but [a:Christian Jungersen|163050|Christian Jungersen|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] does a pretty good job keeping it interesting and poignant without drumming it in too harshly.

And the office politics bullying is done with a keen eye. I got the same sort of knots in my stomach that I get when I watch the intimate psychological savagery in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

But Jungersen spends far too much effort trying to make his book into a sexy Hollywood-thriller-to-be. Dramatic murders, mysterious international hoodlums, near-death chase scenes, handwaving computer espionage, and a whodunit with lots of twists and turns. If I want that sort of thing, I’ll watch a James Bond film.

Subjects

Stalkers -- Fiction
Suspense fiction
Denmark -- Fiction