Book Log 2014 #17: The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen

This fourth Department Q novel takes as its starting point a period in Danish history where eugenics were in vogue and young women - often girls, really - were put into facilities and often sterilized against their will. From this Adler-Olsen creates a convoluted case that involves one of the women subjected to this treatment, a doctor forming a "purity" party on the far right of Danish politics, and a number of seemingly unrelated people who went missing.

While this use of painful recent history makes this a more somber case, there is still a fair bit of humor pulled from the department and Carl Morck's personal life (though that even gets pulled down a bit as Carl is implicated in both the drowning death of his uncle years before and the shooting that left one of his coworkers paralyzed). I do look forward to learning just a bit more about Rose and Assad with every book, and this one certainly moves things forward for both of them.

If you're not reading this series, and you like Scandinavian crime fiction, you should start reading these. It'd be timely, too, as the fifth book in the series was released in the US just this week.