The Purity of Vengeance: A Department Q Novel Paperback – July 29, 2014

In this installment, Department Q is juggling more than just a missing persons investigation. There’s Carl’s cousin’s slander, Bak’s sister’s brutal attack, a new body tied to the nail gun case, the dark history of the Purity Party, and the horrific sterilizations of women on Sprogø—more than enough to keep Carl, Assad, and Rose buried in work in their dingy basement office. Meanwhile, Carl’s personal life is in flux: Vigga is asking for a divorce, Mona gives him a key to her place, and things at home are shifting too. Morten brings a boyfriend to home, Hardy begins regaining feeling in parts of his body, and Jesper is just trying to scrape by. A gripping story that keeps you hooked until the very end.

Carl and Assad are two very different people with the same goal. That goal is to bring justice to those that have been forgotten over time. The story portrayed in this mystery is dark, but light is found in the end. A wonderful read with a precarious ending. I enjoy every word.

Department Q is a supposed part of a Danish Police Force designed to give the main character Carl Mork a place to go after he is traumatized in a shoot-out which kills one partner, seriously wounds another, and also injures himl. He is content to be "kicked downstairs," hoping not to work too hard on unsolved cases. But his two assistant Rose and Assad have other plans. Pretty soon the three are involved in searching for a Danish politician who disappeared five years earlier. It is both dark and funny, especially as Assad, who was born in Syria tries to master Danish. Each book thereafter involves an unsolved crime, and increasingly interesting relationships between Carl, Rose, and Assad. In the first three books readers get to see a little of Denmark, a country I think of as my second home. In this book Adler-Olsen focuses on the history--and the underbelly--of Danish politics.The Purity of Vengeance begins with Rose unearthing a connection between several people who went missing on the same day in 1987. What they have in common, though Dept Q doesn't know it yet, is a connection to Sprogo, a small island to which women of uncertain character or intelligence were sent from the mid 1930s to 1961. In doing so Adler-Olsen addresses a little known yet very painful part of Danish history and the eugenics movement that swept through both Europe and the United States in the 30s.Moving back and forth in time from the late 30s, to the mid 80s, to 2010 the novel reveals the tragic story of Nete Hermansen who was wrongly sent to Sprogo, and ultimately sterilized at the hands of Dr. Curt Wad. Now in 2010 Wad has set his sights on making his ultra right wing "Purity Party" legitimate with the right to have candidates for Parliament on the ballot. But when Dept Q's research into the past discover Wad's secretive and evil acts Wad sets his sights on destroying Dept Q, At the same time Carl and company are learning what happened to young women on Sprogo and how Wad was involved and how Nete herself sought vengeance.Of Adler's four novels published thus far in English The Purity of Vengeance has the most compelling story line because it is based in fact. At the story's end the mystery of what happened to those who went missing is solved but there are more than enough loose ends, and emotional triggers, for Adler-Olsen to continue with yet another novel about Department Q.My only criticism of the book is with the translation. As Adler-Olsen reveals Carl's thinking on everything from the case, to his lazy step-son, to his confusion over Rose's behavior Carl's thoughts seem to come straight from a London gutter. This really distracted me because I thought it over-done to the point of altering the characterization of Mork Adler-Olsen developed in the first three novels. In spite of this distraction I gave the book 5 stars because it is such a good read.

This is probably more of a 3.5 read for me. The story is pretty brutal, but the storyline and my desire for justice kept me turning pages. The abuse of “morally deficient” women was hard to read.

This is one of my favorite Scandinavian series. Jussi Adler-Olsen writes beautifully, with fascinating and complex characters, interesting crimes and enough humor to offset the violence. Much of the humor comes from Carl Morck's snarky crankiness and the quirks of his assistants, Assad and Rose. These are great characters, and as the series progresses we (very) slowly get some of their backstory. (I assume the author has a long term plan, but it's four books in, and I would surely love to know more about Assad's history.) Also, over the course of the four books, we learn a tiny bit more about what happened when Morck and his two partners were ambushed, leaving one dead, one paralyzed, and one filled with guilt, and again, I'm anxious to have this history addressed. We get some movement on the case, but not much. With additional time spent on Carl's fading marriage and his new girlfriend, Adler-Olsen is juggling many threads here, but not making much progress on any of them. That said, I loved the book and didn't begrudge any of the 500 pages. I wish it would go on and on.Curt Wad is a fascist physician shepherding his beloved Purity Party into a position of influence in the Danish government. When he is seen by Nete Harmansen, the first victim of his program of enforced abortions and sterilization against minorities and others he doesn't think should be reproducing, she embarks on a program of her own, to get revenge against him and others who ruined her life in every way imaginable.The story moves between the present, in which Department Q tries to solve a series of disappearances, and the past, in which we find out how Nete was hurt by each of her intended victims, and how she dealt with each of them in turn. While the novel deals with the heartbreaking and disturbing history of Denmark's Sprogo Island, I loved the book, and consider it a great addition to one of the best Scandinavian thriller series out there.This is the fourth book in the series (which has been published under multiple titles, so beware!) They are: The Keeper of Lost Causes (aka Mercy), The Absent One (Disgrace), Conspiracy of Faith (Redemption), The Purity of Vengeance and The Marco Effect.