Morgue Drawer: Do Not Enter! by Jutta Profijt

First Line: The Renault Kangoo van was wedged between the narrow piers under the bridge like a boil in a butt crack, but the driver's seat was empty.

Pascha is the ghost of a twenty-five-year-old car thief who, for some unknown reason, didn't "walk into the light." He's stuck in the environs of a morgue in Cologne, Germany, and the only living person who can hear him is Martin, the coroner. Trouble is, Martin doesn't want to hear Pascha and has gone to great lengths in an attempt to tune him out.

Since Martin would rather spend time with his girlfriend, Pascha has been hanging around hospital rooms and accident sites hoping to meet another spirit who will stay a while and keep him company. He gets more than he bargained for when four small children are gravely injured in a car accident and put into induced comas, setting their spirits free to roam. In addition, the teacher driving the van seems to have vanished. Now Pascha is a very reluctant babysitter and an extremely eager detective.

I've been enjoying this series. The voice of Pascha has been alternately hilarious, touching, and exasperating-- and the attempts of Martin to tune him out can be funny as well. I feel for both these men; I understand Pascha's loneliness, and I can certainly understand Martin's frustration at being the only person who can hear this restless ghost-- especially since they are polar opposites in temperament.

As the series progresses, Pascha has found that his boundaries have changed a bit, and he takes advantage of that in an attempt to keep boredom at bay. He's found that he enjoys the "company" of a police detective named Gregor since he likes helping out during investigations, but Gregor can't hear him, and Pascha has found it increasingly difficult to get Martin to cooperate.

Morgue Drawer: Do Not Enter! deals with the very real problems with the drug trade as well as within immigrant communities and the mystery is a strong element in the book, as it has been in all the others in the series. However, the tone has changed, and at first I found it extremely annoying. It wasn't the fact that one of the children's spirits was a racist (although it didn't help). What bothered me was how Pascha had changed. It was almost as if that one child's behavior had set him free to express other, nastier, parts of his personality. Pascha's attitude is much darker in this book, and when it dawned on me why, I smiled. Profijt really thought through the progression of Pascha's character.

If the only person you could talk to was someone who couldn't stand you and went through all sorts of machinations to avoid you, wouldn't that get to you after a while? If you couldn't do the things you really love in life-- like go out with pretty girls or drive fast cars-- wouldn't you find your attitude changing for the worse? That's what's happening here, and it sets up the last book of the series beautifully. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Morgue Drawer: Do Not Enter! by Jutta Profijt

Translated from the German by Erik J. Macki.

eISBN: 9781477826409

Amazon Crossing © 2014

eBook, 313 pages

Police Procedural, #4 Morgue Drawer mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon.


 

Morgue Drawer for Rent by Jutta Profijt

First Line: So if I were going to put a date on when the series of crises at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Cologne began, it would  have to be July twelfth.

Much against his most profound wish, coroner Martin Gänsewein is once again thrown in with Pascha, the foul-mouthed spirit who refuses to leave the Cologne Institute of Forensic Medicine. Bodies from the local cemetery are turning up with organs missing, and Martin realizes he needs the assistance of Pascha in order to solve the case.

This third book in the series takes up right where Morgue Drawer Next Door left off. Cologne is in the midst of a horrible heat wave, asbestos is being removed from the Institute building, and the icing on this cake of complete havoc is the new head of the department, a bean counter referred to as "Piggy Bank" by all those under his lunatic thumb of iron. I am amazed at how the author has kept me intrigued with the idea of teaming an intellectual man of science with the deceased spirit of a hormone-fueled young car thief. This is a very odd couple indeed, and it works because these two do not remain static.

Martin is the only human Pascha can talk to, but Martin has a girlfriend he'd like to move in with-- and not share her with "the voice in his head." As Martin frantically tries to come up with a solution to his problem, he's putting his relationship with his girlfriend in jeopardy. Pascha never sleeps, and there's only so many movies he can watch in Cologne's theaters. He's taken to writing his memoirs and trying to get them published-- with extremely interesting results. Although Pascha's grammar has improved gradually in the series, his descriptions are often crudely hilarious, and I've come to look froward to them.

This series is succeeding with me because Profijt has her characters grow and change as various relationships develop-- and because it's obvious that she's having fun writing these books. However, I did have one area of concern in Morgue Drawer for Rent. Profijt does admit in a section at the back of the book that she takes some artistic license with a couple of subjects, but she took a bit too much for me. Her bending of the facts of asbestos removal and one other subject kept throwing me out of the story, and I'm no expert on either subject. Be that as it may, I'm enjoying this series too much to stop just yet!
   

Morgue Drawer for Rent by Jutta Profijt

Translated from the German by Erik J. Macki

eISBN: 9781611090420

Amazon Crossing © 2012

eBook, 315 pages

Paranormal/Humorous Mystery, #3 Morgue Drawer mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon. 

Morgue Drawer Next Door by Jutta Profijt

First Line: I'm going to start this account with an incident that occurred before the plot of this book even began.

One of the worst things about being a ghost-- at least to former car thief Pascha-- is the loneliness. Medical examiner Dr. Martin Gänsewein has returned to work, but he still wishes he weren't the only person who can hear Pascha, and he's started trying to invent things that will make the young ghost keep his distance. Even Pascha's morgue drawer is occupied by a different body.

Things start looking up when Marlene is brought to the morgue drawer next door, but she's not the leggy blonde Pascha was hoping for. Marlene is the spirit of a nun who was killed in a fire that destroyed a wing of her medieval convent and home there in Cologne, Germany. Even though Marlene spends way too much time praying in the hospital chapel, Pascha does empathize with her because he believes that she was murdered. Now the two ghosts are determined to find the nun's killer, but there's only one problem: they can't do it without Martin's help. Yes, Martin... the man who wants to go back to the good old days when he knew ghosts didn't exist.

When I read the first book in this series, Morgue Drawer Four, I wondered just how long this premise would be able to last. After all, pairing the ghost of a poorly educated, outgoing young car thief with a highly educated, introverted and meticulous medical examiner does sound gimmicky. I'm happy to say that the premise is alive and well in this second book. The author keeps her idea fresh by changing it up a little. Martin is pretty much kept in the background, although he is at the heart of a running joke about his ghost-busting inventions. Instead, Martin's girlfriend Birgit has a much bigger part in the action-- and she plays her role well. 

Of course, the biggest change is bringing in a nun to pair with the irreverent Pascha. Marlene is such a polar opposite to the young man that it's fun to watch them get used to each other and finally begin to work together. While Martin remains a rather static character, Pascha does not. From being in the presence of people with much stronger morals and much more education than he's used to, readers can see how his language changes, how he thinks things through, and how his natural inclinations for compassion and doing what's right are growing stronger. It seems as though Pascha has to earn his wings before he can step into the light.

One scene in Morgue Drawer Next Door did not work for me. Pascha, Marlene, and Martin's girlfriend Birgit have gone off to try to catch a killer while Martin stays at home to work on an invention. I won't go into detail about the scene, but Martin's behavior just does not ring true to his character.

On the other hand, Pascha and Marlene find themselves in a situation that's familiar to crime fiction readers: they know whom the killer is, but there's no proof and a very real chance that the person will go free. However, these two crime fighters have a few tools unavailable to us mortals, and how they set about to force the murderer to confess is absolutely hilarious.

Jutta Profijt is proving to be a writer who can think outside the box-- and one who can make me laugh out loud as I read her books. I'm definitely looking forward to continuing with this series.

Morgue Drawer Next Door by Jutta Profijt

Translated from the German by Erik J. Macki.

eISBN: 9781611090406

AmazonCrossing © 2012

eBook, 296 pages

Amateur Sleuth, #2 Morgue Drawer mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon

Morgue Drawer Four by Jutta Profijt

First Line: I hope you'll read this account from top to bottom because it's the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and so on-- eh, I'm sure you've heard the saying.

If a person is shy and meticulous like Dr. Martin Gänsewein, the job of coroner is perfect. He can autopsy bodies in the Cologne morgue, order labwork and tests, and not be worried about any of his "patients" talking back to him. That is, until  young car thief Pascha Lerchenberg moves into morgue drawer #4. Once Pascha realizes two things-- (1) that his death has been labeled an accident, and (2) that Gänsewein is the only person who can hear him-- he won't leave Martin alone. Why? Because Pascha doesn't want his death to be remembered as a drunken accident. He was murdered, and since he can't prove it, it's up to Dr. Martin Gänsewein to do it for him.

Author Jutta Profijt has taken a quirky, offbeat idea, developed it, refined it, and served it up to perfection. The combination of cultured, intelligent, shy Dr. Martin Gänsewein and the boisterous, profane and practically illiterate Pascha Lerchenberg is the best pairing since Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar. There is also a stronger than normal sense of reader participation in the book. What do I mean by that? Working together as a team understandably takes Martin and Pascha quite a bit of time, and while Martin is working through the stages of avoidance, denial and acceptance and Pascha is figuring out what he can and cannot do, the reader can pick up the trail of clues these two characters need to follow.

At first Pascha is not a very likeable character. He has a completely selfish view of the world, and his limited skills center around grand theft auto. His desires and his impulses are the center of his universe. What is fun to watch is how he very slowly begins to change as he spends more and more time with intelligent, detail-oriented, true blue Martin. Pascha starts seeing the world from a very different perspective, and he even makes a concerted effort to improve his vocabulary. Of course, once Martin gets over the feeling that he's gone insane, his blinkered world view begins to expand as well, and it's amazing to see the lengths this reserved, almost innocent man will go to in order to bring a killer to justice.

I expected this book to be witty and funny-- and it is. I was surprised by how involved I became in the action and by how touching many of the scenes were. Erik J. Macki's work is superb, picking up many nuances that often get lost in other translated books. Morgue Drawer Four is a humorous mystery with unexpected depth, and I really look forward to reading the other "Morgue Drawer" books. My only reservation is that a premise like this may not be strong enough to support a long-running series. Sometimes short and sweet is best.

Morgue Drawer Four by Jutta Profijt

Translated from the German by Erik J. Macki
ISBN: 9781611090321

Amazon Crossing © 2011

eBook, 245 pages

Humorous Mystery, #1 Morgue Drawer mystery

Rating: A-

Source: Purchased as an eBook from Amazon.