In A Conspiracy of Faith, our main detective Carl Morck finds himself involved attempting to solve a series of arson cases and a mysterious message found, in a stunningly cliched manner, in a bottle floating in water. But I have written before that it is not the plot that is hooking me in these novels. It is the characters of Department Q themselves that are my guideposts.
Carl is tired, grumpy, overly protective of his space in the basement of the police department, and bound and determined to tick off every officer who dares take an interest in one of his cases. Assad, his assistant, is clearly hiding something about his past and while he maintains a relatively cheerful facade, there's something going on with him and I need to know what that is. This one plot line may be the only reason I continue reading these 500-plus page books. But Rose. This character was introduced in the previous book and now it turns out she's a split personality, but her other identity comes to work and does her job? There was a brief mention of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but this whole thing just didn't work for me. The "other" identity was boring and I just wanted Rose to come back and be sassy to Carl.
But, regardless, I'm still plugging away at this series. I really want to know more about Assad and I find Carl sort of a joyless joy to hang out with a few hours. I'm not sure I'm as enthusiastic about recommending this series as I was at the beginning, but I'm definitely still on board.
My reviews:
Department Q Book 1 - The Keeper of Lost Causes
Department Q Book 2 - The Absent One
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