Customer Reviews

Redemption: Department Q, Book 3 (Unabridged)

I had read the two previous books in this series, Which I enjoyed immensely, and would recommend. The wait for this book was worth it. I have enjoyed every page, the characters are funny, serious and so very human. The story is intriguing and flows from the finding of a bottle. I will say no more than this about the story, I recommend that you read it, it's a real page turner. I am definitely a fan of Jussi Adler-Olsen. I am going to read the first two books again, but REDEMPTION is a winner

When a bottle is washed up on a beach in Scotland, it is found to contain a message, mostly obliterated by time and damp, but with the Danish word for 'Help' still clearly showing at the top. This might have been dismissed as a joke except that the bottle also contains traces of blood. The age of the message marks this as a cold case, so it falls to the head of Copenhagen's Department Q, Carl M�rck, and his team to investigate. Enough of the message can be deciphered to suggest that it relates to a kidnapping, perhaps worse. But the case isn't as cold as Carl thinks, as the kidnapper is just about to repeat his crime...

This was my first introduction to Jussi Adler-Olsen and I was very impressed. The story is told in the third person from a variety of viewpoints, and in the past tense. (Hurrah! Am I the only person who's tired of every second book being in the present tense these days?) The author manages to create a good mix of humour mixed in with some really nail-biting suspense. There are some great action scenes, fast-paced and tense, together with some slower but no less interesting passages where Adler-Olsen lets the reader see inside the heads of the main players. His characterisation is very strong, both of villain and victims, and some of the scenes are quite harrowing, though he steers clear of being too graphic for the most part. Contrasted with this is the humour around the odd mix of people who make up Carl's team and family. It took me a while to get tuned in to these characters and some of them are undoubtedly a bit too eccentric to be quite realistic. However as I got to know them better, they grew on me - particularly Carl's main sidekick, his Syrian assistant Assad, who provides much of the book's humour. Carl himself is of course a bit of a maverick with lots of problems, but he stops well short of the stereotypical angst-ridden drunk, thankfully, and I found him a very likeable lead character.

The translator Martin Aitken has done an excellent job. The gradual deciphering of the message is key to the plot while a lot of the humour is based around Assad's misuse and misunderstanding of words, but Aitken manages to navigate these issues seamlessly and for once the humour travels very well. In fact, had I not known it was a translation, I'm not sure I would have guessed, which is about the highest praise I can give.

I could criticise some small weaknesses in the book - coincidence comes into play occasionally, some aspects stretch credulity a bit, the ending is perhaps a shade clichéd. But overall I found the book very well written and strongly plotted, and heartily recommend it as both an interesting and enjoyable read that held my attention throughout. Although it works well as a standalone, I felt I would have gained from knowing the recurring characters' back-stories, and will now be adding the earlier books to the TBR pile.

(This book has been published in the US under the title 'A Conspiracy of Faith', which I must say I think is a much better title for it than 'Redemption'. Confusingly, it is available under both titles in the UK.)

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher.

This author is fantastic. Loved his first book in the Department Q series, second one not as good, but this one well up to standard. A gripping, hard-to-put-down thriller with plenty of gore!

It's the same book....two titles. Working my way through all Jussi A-D's books which I find clever and witty. Exciting with out being so turgidly gruesome as some of the Scandi thrillers. And I find i've already ready the latest arrival. What a disappointment. Don't make the same mistake.Redemption (Department Q 3)A Conspiracy of Faith (Department Q Novels)

Thoroughly enjoyed this Danish crime novel. I like the technique of disclosing a small part of each thread of this multi-layered story and moving on. It kept the suspense going to the end of the book. It pulls no punches in the description of events. Well worth buying.

A bottle washes up on a Scottish shore, containing a faded and sea-damaged piece of paper. A messages is partly decipherable and the messages eventually finds it's way home, via various police connnections to it's native Denmark, and in particular into the hands of Carl Morck, the head of Danish police department Q3 who specialise in unsolved cases.

Carl has an interesting assortment of people working for him, not least the eccentric Assad, who takes it upon himself to try to piece together the wording of the half-destroyed message. Slowly, a story emerges from the message of someone in terrible danger, captured, bound and abandoned to a terrible fate. Through other scenes, the author let's us know that the same scenario has happened many times before, and we learn that a precise replica of the crime from many years ago is actually happening now, with the victims in equal danger.

The details are horrific - a deeply damaged man with an incredible talent for deception, who has taken it upon himself to seek revenge for his own hideous upbringing by wreaking death and destruction on innocent children. Some of the passages are painful to read, but this is perhaps the whole point of Scandi-crime like this - what is the point of pulling the punches and letting the reader guess what is going on when you can spell it out in all it's awfulness?

But the book is not bleak - far from it. Carl and his team provide much amusement. They gainfully struggle with their dreadful office accommodation and wind each other up by all sorts of personality clashes and eccentricities. Carl himself is an interesting character who's own demons pop up from time to time and leave him struggling to retain his mental equlibrium.

While Jussi Adler-Olsen's new book Redemption is undoubtedly a very fine crime novel, I confess to finding it slightly overlong. It meanders along down many side-roads and at times I found myself thinking "when will this ever end". However, for those who like a long and complex crime novel with huge amounts of detail and a slow-burning plot, this book is ideal. I would have given it five stars but in the end, I weighed my frustration with it's length against the quality of the story and came up with four - perhaps four and a half stars if I could do that.

I loved this book and could not put it down until it was finished! Well written and a real page turner.

I have read all three in order and they have been really good. Olsen is a proper story teller and his characters are all misfits but together they are like a family. These books work for me on many levels and they all have a cliff hanger of an ending in true adventure story style. The books are really difficult to put down.

I am looking forward to the next in series.
When reading you feel like you know all the main characters.
Feel sad when it's finished.
The combination of Carl and his assistant are totally different and work really well.

Extremely well written to give a gripping tale with some darkly humorous asides. Had me gripped from the start with some interesting character profiles. I'll now have to get Dept Q1 and 2!