OPINION:
THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES: A DETECTIVE VARG NOVEL
By Alexander McCall Smith
Pantheon, $24.95, 240 pages
Only Alexander McCall Smith would be expected to concoct a book involving a plot that spins around a stabbed kneecap, an imaginary boyfriend and a depressed and deaf dog — and then throw in lycanthropy, the transformation of a human into a wolf.
The author of more than 80 books has not lost his literary touch, but his latest account of the doings at Sweden’s Department of Sensitive Crimes hits a new high of hilarity.
Appropriately enough, the lead character in “The Deparment of Sensitive Crimes: A Detective Varg Novel” appears on the jacket which portrays Ulf “the wolf.” This is first Ulf Varg detective novel. The name Ulf comes from the old Norse word for “wolf” and Varg means “wolf” in modern Swedish — in other words, Wolf Wolf.
His partner in crime is a dog called Marten, the only dog in Sweden capable of lipreading. Varg is a detective / psychotherapist who investigates unusual crimes, yet he isn’t too interested in solving them because he believes people think too much. His colleague, the therapist Dr. Svensson, concurs. He observes, “Thinking precludes verbalization and verbalization precedes resolution What we’re trying to do here is find out what you think without thinking.”
This approach, of course, takes quite a weight off serious crimes like homicide. Here, whimsical, almost unrealistic, sleuthing seeks to solve the most curious of crimes, and even prove the existence of werewolves. And it leaves the staff of the Department of Sensitive Crimes time to find out why someone was stabbed in the kneecap or why a teenager called Him invented a boyfriend called Sexten and sent him to the North Pole as part of some spectacular lies she invented to impress her teenage friends, although not her mother.
The possibility that an actual crime is involved stretches even the imagination of the Sensitive Crimes Department, although Ulf is prepared to visuazlize anything. He is especially sympathetic to the man who stabbed the kneecap when it is explained that this was a man who felt unloved. Keep in mind this is a detective who speaks kindly of bikers.
He points out that most bikers he knows are retired and “sedate.” He notes that big Harleys are like armchairs where you “sit back and take the corners carefully.” Bikers, according to Varg, like to get home early. Not to mention that these bikers are not amused by anything; he is just philosophizing.
Ulf Varg is also a dog lover, of course, owner of the hearing-impaired Marten, who is walked daily by a kindly neighbor. She worries about Marten because she says you have to make allowances for him. Part of it is Marten’s deafness. And it gets worse. Marten often gets depressed, and it has to be explained to Varg and his colleagues that dogs do get depressed and need to be soothed back into playfulness.
This epic piece of Alexander McCall Smith reaches its climax when the police have to settle on the punishment of the unhappy creature who stabbed someone in the back of the knee because he was unloved. It will not surprise the reader that the repentant criminal is condemned to community service. Hours long of it.
And the Sensitive Crimes police go back to work, which seems to consist of dealing with apologies. And the author presumably goes on to write another 80 books and who can blame him? Certainly not the reader, who runs out to buy books of his like this that are just plain fun and don’t make you think.
• Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.
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