I'm probably an outlier. The cases interest me, but I'm not sure I'll continue with the series because I so dislike the main character. Not just that he hasn't grown on me, I genuinely find him quite off-putting. He's not good at detecting, his assistants do almost all the footwork, and largely make the breakthroughs as well! And he's sort of a creep, and sometimes a bully, and unprofessional, and sexist and racist, and lazy, and has a self-centered mindset, and just is SO not who I want to spend hours of my life inside the head of. A *single* instance in these 4 books he surprised me with an intention that was truly good of him and went above expectations. But the rest of the time he barely scrapes by at being decent. Assad is a great character, very clever and likable. But Carl is the main character, and if he hasn't grown or improved by 4 books in, then he's probably just not going to. If he wasn't good with people but was top notch at his job, or if he wasn't that bright but really cared about people, or *something* to offset him just being a sort of schmuck, I might continue on, but it's just like 90% disappointment.

Side note- The repetitive references to all the characters having some sort of bowel sickness, or snot literally pouring out of them, was overly extensive, and seemed like it was going for cheap potty humor or something. The book is 500 pages and did not need like 30 detailed descriptions of their sick... In general, all the books so far should have been trimmed down.
How many times can Carl have good reason to be wary of someone, then make a phone call or something where he, entirely unnecessarily, *turns his back on them* (and is promptly attacked)- before they take away his badge for incompetence? People would normally learn from this mistake the first time. Either he's a halfwit, or the author just keeps phoning in the setup for the climactic scene by having Carl totally drop the ball each time. ( )

The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen is a fine work of Nordic noir fiction. It's Adler-Olsen's fourth book featuring Carl Morck of the Copenhagen Police Department and his two assistants, Assad and Rose.

The Purity Party has received enough favourable votes to stand as an independent political party in the country's next election. Among its leaders are well-respected businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and so forth, all of them bigots who believe in and participate in the forced sterilization of those with low iQs, immigrant women with large families; all of them focused on racial purity. Women are being given abortions that they do not consent to. All of this blows up when Department Q's archives reveal the disappearance of several party members all within one week in 1987. Now neither the Purity Party nor Carl & co. are safe from danger.

I'd have given the book five stars had it not been for the multitude of narrow escapes that occur throughout the book. I've noticed this tendency for repeats of violent action in Adler-Olsen's works before, particularly in his stand-alone novel The Alphabet House, which lurches from fist fight to fist fight.

That aside, this was an engrossing read, and I'm going to read the next Department Q novel next; it's called The Marco Effect ( )

So far, I have enjoyed the second in the series the most. I skipped over the third because it involves children and I have not been able to read stories with children as victims. Just too thin skinned. There are parts of this that make me shake my head at the cultural divide I feel. Truly, some of the story reads so passing strange to me but I find that interesting. The back story was much more intriguing to me than the plot per se which felt a little contrived. I continue to enjoy Assad. I do believe he will come to be known as one of the best Watsons yet. ( )

I listened to this one in the car. If you do this - be warned - three women in the book are named Nete (Pronounced Nita), Rita, and Gitta (rhymes with the other two)...so but for the first letter - the names sound identical - which took me a bit to get comfortable with and caused some confusion in the beginning.
Enjoyed it - Assad is fleshed out a teensy bit more, and Rose's character gets more back story. Half of these is - for me, anyway - is the enjoyment of the characters. The other half is the mystery. Enjoyed this one so much that I immediately jumped into the next book in the series when I finished this one. ( )

2014 vierentwintigste druk