Uncertainty: A Novel - Hardcover

Larsen, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151002029 ISBN 13: 9780151002023

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996

Synopsis

In an erotic psychological thriller by an up-and-coming Danish writer, a mentally unbalanced tabloid journalist suspected of murdering his girlfriend tries to clear his name and discovers that his former lover led a double life.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Larsen was born in 1961 in Copenhagen. He worked for a number of years as a journalist and in 1992 his first book was published, Med livet i hælene (Pursued by Life), a comedy stand-up novel. 1994 saw the publication of Uden sikker viden (Uncertainty), a thriller which has been sold to 25 countries - including Germany, UK, USA, France, Italy and most recently Japan - making Michael Larsen one of the most translated Danish authors. This distinguished status is now being further enhanced by the major thriller Slangen i Sydney (The Serpent in Sydney) which appeared in 1997 and has been sold to Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Lithuania.

Reviews

A bestseller in Denmark and Germany, this bleak Danish thriller lives up to its title right from page one, by offering the point of view of an unreliable narrator who washes down Dexedrine, Thorazine and other drugs with straight shots of whiskey. Cynical, mistrustful, technology-hating Martin Molberg, a Copenhagen newspaper reporter, is suspected by the police of having murdered his girlfriend, SAS flight attendant Monique Milazar. Martin, who's both innocent of the crime and in therapy for a "minor nervous breakdown," begins his own search for the killer of the woman he loved. He has two clues: a piece of paper, found among Monique's effects, that lists a man's name and a room number at a swank L.A. hotel; and a picture of Monique having sex with a man in that room. Traveling to L.A., Martin meets another beautiful SAS flight attendant, Natasha Noiret, whom he believes may be using the same hotel room in which the photograph placed Monique. But matters aren't necessarily as they appear, and nothing and no one can be trusted in Larsen's illusion-filled world. At last, Molberg discovers the conspiracy behind his girlfriend's death, only to find himself trapped in a nightmare world infused with a cold and twisted spirit. Despite snappy translation and intense debate over the merits and drawbacks of technological progress, it's the metallic taste of paranoia that readers will carry away from Larsen's effective, vaguely repellent tale. 35,000 first printing; foreign rights sold in Brazil, England, Finland, France, Greece, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden; translation rights: Samleren Forlag.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Larsen's 1994 novel, a bestseller in its native Denmark, is a deconstructionist detective story in which every scrap of evidence leads further away from the truth. Despite the fortuitous testimony of an alibi witness, the Copenhagen police still think celebrity-hunting newspaperman Martin Molberg killed his live-in fianc‚e Monique Milazar, an SAS flight attendant, two months ago. But Molberg knows better, or at least he thinks he does. He's followed a clue the cops ignored--a scrap of paper in Monique's apartment reading ``Jack Roth Pascal, Hotel Four Seasons, Room 505''--to Los Angeles, where he's trying to track down the elusive Pascal, whose name doesn't appear on any database his contacts can access. Through his buddy Lindvig, a video freak, Molberg gets experts to scrutinize a photo of Monique in flagrante with a strange man (Pascal?) till he's seen a lot more in that picture than he'd like. Suddenly remembering a CD he was asked to smuggle through customs by Natasha Noiret--the flight attendant who's taken Monique's place in his bed, and begun to take it in his dreams--he concocts a theory linking it to a sinister international conspiracy that dropped two million crowns into his joint account before leaving Monique dead. Pursuing the truth through a haze of Dexedrine, Thorazine, Prozac, Sulpril, and Unisom, Molberg finds himself less and less sure that he knows what he's talking about. ``Everything has a beginning, middle, and end,'' Molberg tells himself as he races down the last mile. ``This has to have an ending.'' Despite the whodunit trajectory of the story, the echoes of Robbe-Grillet, John Hawkes, William Gibson, and J.P. Smith warn you not to count on it. A fast-moving thriller that's also a modish, moody catalogue of the number of tools--pills, liquor, psychotherapy, computers, the media--up-to-the-minute moderns have developed to distance themselves from themselves. (First printing of 35,000) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sex, drugs, violence, high-tech threats to life as we know it--Uncertainty has them all. Danish journalist Martin Molberg can't be certain he didn't kill his fiancee, Monique. Booze, uppers, downers, and the discovery of a photo suggesting that Monique had a hidden kinky side have Molberg uncertain about everything. The police think he's the prime suspect, but someone has provided Molberg with an alibi. When he sets out to learn the truth, he finds it as elusive as peace of mind or the reality of digitally altered images that can be used to narcotize and manipulate an unsuspecting public. Larsen, who is a Danish journalist, has written a skillfully crafted, thoughtful, and evocative novel that calls to mind a winning mixture of Michael Crichton's technology-laced plots and Thomas (Silence of the Lambs) Harris' tormented characters. Thomas Gaughan

Treading in the footprints of Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow, this Danish thriller features a tabloid journalist who must prove he didn't murder his girlfriend.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151002029
• ISBN 13: 9780151002023
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272