Shocking but gripping

I couldn't stop listening to this. The plot has some very distasteful elements but what do you expect in a novel based around a homicide detective? Murder is always going to be the tip of an unpleasant iceberg.

I think the narration is excellent. The characters are all individually voiced (although this entails giving them different UK regional accents, each one is convincing, to me at least as a Londoner).

I assume this is translated and if so the translation is excellent too.

I shall certainly buy the other books by this author and look for other narrations by Stephen Pacey.

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3 people found this helpful

Gripping story, masterful narration

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

The story is wonderful, but the narration lifts it to another level. Mr Pacey's characterisations, in particular of Assad, makes this unmissable. This is an example of why many books are better heard than read.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Karl is a very interesting lead character

Which character – as performed by Steven Pacey – was your favourite?

Assad! Inspired performance (as in all books in the series)

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The best of Scandanavian noir

Any additional comments?

As long as this team of author and narrator keep producing books, they will have at least one customer!

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1 person found this helpful

Great book

Love the two secondary characters. I notice the main man is more into his job now which is a shame - quite like the anti hero thing in book one. But love the complexity of him.

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Good crime listen

I started listening to this series as Steven Pacey is the narrator and I am not sorry one bit. The first book was okay, it dragged a little near the end, but it was interesting enough. The second one is better, and hopefully next one will be too.

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A Unique Combination

This series really is something special. Books that can both make me laugh and keep in genuine suspense are few and far between. And yet Jussi Adler Olsen achieves both in strong measures with his well crafted plots and finely detailed characters. Sure you will find detective story cliches in here, the disaffected central character, the bosses that are more hindrance than help and so on but Olsen surrounds his man with characters that challenge his thinking on almost every level,

Pacey is a great choice as narrator and delivers with considerable panache making this one of my favourite Audible series to date!

One note, this is the second of the series and while it could stand alone I am sure it is worth reading these in order to get the best out of the characters..

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7 people found this helpful

Gripping stuff

Take a gripping story and mix it with the best narrator out there and this is the result. A great story, that had me hooked from beginning to end. It is not often I read books from the same series back to back but I'll be starting on book three immediately. Get involved, you won't regret it.!

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Not bad... carries the series along

This was a fairly relaxed and undemanding narrative, despite the mayhem and violence. I do not like the narrator's practice of using British dialects to characterise various Scandinavian groups.

The villains were suitably unbelievable but the central characters (who continue hopefully throughout the series) are satisfying enough. I will read the next in the series soon.

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Loved this book

The themes of the novel are dark but they have been handled with care and sensitivity. This gives the reader opportunities for insight without being left with a sense that the plot and the events were written simply to satisfy the author's needs. Too often I start to read a crime novel and then put the book down and leave it down because it feels like the writer has a need to purge to themselves or is writing purely to attract readers who are attracted to gratuitous violence. I was a little sceptical at first about some of the characterisation but as I read on the personalities rang as true. A really good read and I will look for more by this author.

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Just loved it

Hard to explain I found the story entirely captivating. Although aspects are "known" early on, this still works as a compelling novel.

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Violent, Dark but Original Listen

There are two key things that I love about this series: the narrator and the characters of Dept Q. There is an honesty about people, so no one is without their faults but this a source of great humour too. This balances out (just) the extremely dark storyline. The narrator makes the characters utterly convincing even when they are far fetched as in the 'villains' of this book. It's not a whodunnit, more a journey of how the detectives unravel what happened. The depth and detail that the author puts into his main characters makes these books worthwhile.

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