Redemption (novel)
Redemption (in the Danish original: Flaskepost fra P literally: Message in a bottle from P ) is a thriller by the Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen . The original edition of the third work in a crime novel series for the Carl Mørck Dezernat Q series was published in Denmark in 2009 . In 2016, a film was made with Redemption .
action
Blurb
The cry for help inside a weathered message in a bottle remained undiscovered for years. Then the message ends up in the special department Q for unsolved cases. Their laborious decipherment leads Carl Mørck and his assistant Assad on the trail of a horrific crime: the cry for help, written in human blood, is apparently the last sign of life of two boys who had been kidnapped years before. But who are these boys? Why have your parents never posted a missing person report? Are you possibly still alive? It soon becomes clear: the perpetrator is still walking around freely .
content
In terms of content, the novel “Redemption” is about a sociopath traumatized in his childhood , who assumes different identities, kidnaps children according to a certain scheme and blackmails their parents. Some children are killed by him.
The story begins with the arrival of a parcel that was sent to the Copenhagen Special Department Q by police technician Gilliam Douglas in Edinburgh in Scotland . The package contains a find that the Scottish Police made in the net of a fishing trawler. There are pieces of glass and a letter written with human blood . Since the letter was written in Danish , the British colleagues asked Carl Mørck's police station for administrative assistance. The message in a bottle dates from 1996 and was handed in by a fisherman to the local police in John o 'Groats , County Caithness on the north-eastern tip of Scotland. The bottle reaches the Wick Police Station via detours . The police officer who accepted the message in a bottle dies on an operation and the bottle is forgotten. The bottle is later found by a computer expert. She cannot open the plug of tar that seals the opening and breaks the bottle to get to the contents. Since the letter was written in blood, the evidence is handed over to the police again and finally reaches the special department Q, which at the beginning cannot decipher the faded, cryptic message of the text that was captured on an ultraviolet photo. There are no cases of kidnapping on record in 1996, so the matter is not being investigated any further.
The location of the action changes to Roskilde in Denmark to the Claus and Mia Larsen family, together with their son Benjamin. The father of the family, Claus Larsen, obviously leads a double life. He does not provide his wife with any information about the location of his business trips. In truth, Larsen spies out families in order to take possession of their children. His loot scheme includes wealthy families with many children who are committed to a free church or sect . His pattern includes the kidnapping of two children. He then demands a million crowns from their parents as a ransom , which the family packs in a sack to toss from a train. He always murders the younger of the children and releases the older one after intimidating them with a vow of silence.
The storyline introduces the storyline about the family of the wealthy entrepreneur Jens "Joshua" Krogh and his young wife Lisa "Rachel" Krogh, who lives near Dollerup . The two have five children together: Josef (18), Samuel (16), Miriam (14), Magdalena (12) and Sarah (10) and are strictly religious members of the "Church of Our Lady". Lisa, who calls herself "Rachel" according to the biblical model, had previously lived in Africa for seven years and was raped in Liberia by soldiers from the National Patriotic Front. Lisa managed to kill her rapist and to flee to Denmark via the Ivory Coast . Back in her home country, she made the acquaintance of the agricultural machinery entrepreneur Jens Krogh, called herself Rachel from then on, and converted to the Church of Our Lady.
The perpetrator gets to know the divorced Isabel Jønsson (52 years old) according to a certain “booty pattern”. She is ideal for his project: IT officer at the city of Viborg and living apart from her adult children. The kidnapper has assumed the identity of Mikkel Laust as a camouflage and moves in with Isabel. In Dollerup the criminal uses the name Lars Sørensen and lets himself be admitted to the sect Church of Our Lady. On this occasion, he gained the trust of the Krogh family. He no longer needs camouflage to carry out his deed and one night separates from Isabel on the grounds that she is too old for him. She had previously discovered that her lover, Mikkel Laust, had gained access to her email account. She then becomes suspicious and looks for information about his identity in Laust's personal belongings. She discovers ID cards and credit cards in the name of Mads Christian Fog in Ferslev near Skibby on Zealand .
Laust moves out of Isabel's row house with a packed travel bag and as "Sørensen" he picks up the children Samuel and Magdalena Krogh by car, supposedly for a karate meeting . On an abandoned dirt road, Sørensen overwhelms the two children with chloroform and ties them up. He takes her to the Vibehof boathouse near Jægerspris in the Nordskovenk forest, a property his wife does not know about. As a ransom he demands a million crowns from his parents. He plans to kill Magdalena and dissolve her corpse with caustic soda .
Mia Larsen wants to know more about her husband's mysterious past and discovers moving boxes that belong to him in her house and opens them. Her husband surprises her and in turn suspects her of having an affair with another man. There is a solid argument. He knocks them down. Mia is buried by the moving boxes and can no longer escape. In addition, Claus locks her in the basement. Fearing that his double life might be exposed now, he drops his son Benjamin with his blind sister Eva and his brother-in-law Willy Bremer, who live in a secluded country house near Årup on Funen . Claus asks Eva to take care of Benjamin, as Mia is said to be seriously injured in the hospital. To support her, he increases her monthly donation.
The life story of the perpetrator Claus Larsen and his sister Eva is rolled out. The two come from a bigoted pastor's family who suffered from their father's strict regime. To the annoyance of his father, Claus imitated the actor Charlie Chaplin , which in his eyes represents a " devil's tool" and whereupon he severely abused his son as a punishment. An incident occurs after Claus Larsen's fifteenth birthday. Claus, who puts himself back in the role of Charlie Chaplin, is beaten, insulted and spat upon by his father and is supposed to scrub the walls with cleaning agents as a punishment . As a protest, he lets the contents of the bottle spill on the floor. In a fit of anger, his father knocks the bottle out of his hand. The aggressive substance gets in the face of his daughter Eva, who then goes blind. Claus then has to go to a reform home .
After returning from the reform home, Claus discovers that his mother was living with another man, a widowed chimney sweep , and their two daughters. The young Claus observes his naked step-sisters out of pubertal curiosity, but is betrayed by his biological sister Eva. The new stepfather and his mother chastise the boy by beating him with a cross. In revenge, Claus poisons both of them with sleeping pills , and in desperation the two sisters commit suicide . The police assume that the parents also committed suicide.
The action takes place again in the present. Claus drives to his country estate near Ferslev, his favorite place to stay during the kidnappings and extortions . The actual owner of the farm, Mads Christian Fog, whose identity he sometimes assumes, was murdered by him ten years ago.
The assistants of Carl Mørck, Hafez el-Assad and Yrsa Knudsen, who represents their sick twin sister Rose in the special department, deciphered the message in the message in a bottle: "We were kidnapped on February 16, 1996 [...] At the Lautropvang bus stop in Ballerup [ …]. ”The team from Special Department Q uncovered a case from 1996 when a certain Poul Holt, 18 years old and a student at Lautrupgård School, disappeared in Ballerup . Holt suffered from Asperger's Syndrome .
During his investigation, Carl Mørck locates the Holt family, who have settled in Hallabro , Blekinge in southern Sweden. Martin Holt and his wife have five children together: Poul (31 years old), Mikkeline (26 years old), Tryggve (24 years old), Ellen (16 years old) and Henrik (15 years old). Martin Holt refuses to be questioned by Mørck. So the inspector conducts a witness interview with Martin's son Tryggve Holt and his girlfriend Lillemor Bentsson. Tryggve remembers the year 1996 when he and his brother Poul were kidnapped. It turns out that the kidnapper was an acquaintance of the Holt family, who kept the children in a boathouse and tried to extort ransom. Poul wanted to draw attention to their situation, wrote a cry for help on a piece of paper with his blood and threw it into the water as a message in a bottle. While Poul was murdered by the kidnapper, Tryggve was released on threats to keep silent about what had happened.
After Joshua Krogh had already paid his tax debt early , he no longer has the financial means to raise the ransom for Samuel and Magdalena. He tries to reclaim the money from the city of Viborg, as it was allegedly transferred in error due to a computer error. The IT consultant Isabel Jønsson helps him with troubleshooting. Isabel meets Rachel Krogh. In a photo she recognizes a man who apparently played a role in the kidnapping. They find out that the perpetrator uses multiple identities. The two women discover one of his addresses in the vehicle documents of the delivery truck. This trail leads to Ferslev. Isabel wants to lure the perpetrator into a trap and thereby provoke him by not handing over the ransom, but rather the criminal's clothes. Together with Joshua Krogh they prepare the ransom delivery. While Isabel and Rachel follow the train with the car, Joshua sits in one of the wagons with the ransom and waits for the kidnapper to blink an appointment. In order to attract attention, the women break through a toll station on the Belt Bridge and attract police patrol cars to them. Joshua uses a cell phone to report that the kidnapper sent the agreed light signal via a stroboscope . Rachel and Isabel are able to follow the kidnapper's car. A voice reports on Joshua's cell phone announcing that the owner of the cell phone has died of a heart attack. Rachel rams the kidnapper's vehicle, but the kidnapper can take her off first. He crashes into the two women's car and causes a serious traffic accident. At Lindebjerg Lynge, Isabel and Rachel's vehicle overturns several times. Isabel is hanging upside down in the wreckage of the car when the perpetrator spots her. But before he can kill her, police vehicles approach and rescue the woman. The kidnapper escapes.
To cover up traces, Claus Larsen causes a gas explosion in his house in Ferslev. Carl Mørck and Hafez el-Assad discover the traces of the traffic accident at Lindebjerg Lynge and try to interrogate the seriously injured women in the intensive care unit in the Rigshospital in Copenhagen. According to the attending physicians, Isabel has a good chance of getting through despite a severe injury; only with Rachel there is little hope of survival. Isabel is currently unable to move, speak, or see. Mørck meets Isabel's brother Karsten Jønsen, who has been asked by a doctor for a further examination from the sick room. Isabel notices from her voice that the doctor is the murderer Larsen and panics , which is reflected in the rash and the beeps of the medical measuring devices. The doctor alias Larsen wants to kill Isabel with an air injection. However, he does not hit the vein and is surprised by a nurse. Larsen knocks his sister down and flees. Rachel dies at the same moment. Carl Mørck, Hafez el-Assad and Karsten Jønsen try to find a useful description of the perpetrator from Isabel, but she is unable to speak or write. Only Assad, whose father suffered from aphasia and whose way of speaking he had got used to, can understand them and hears the presumable license plate number of the delivery truck and the address in Ferslev. This trail leads nowhere, as both the house and the van were destroyed in the fire. Larsen assumes that his wife Mia has meanwhile died between the moving boxes and resolves to kill the children in the boathouse and dissolve their corpses in an oil tank mixed with caustic soda. He is also planning to flee to Bulgaria with his son Benjamin in order to emigrate from there with a new identity to the Philippines and start a new life there.
Carl Mørck follows a lead that leads him and his assistant Assad to a bowling alley in Roskilde. They suspect a certain René Svend, who has been linked to illegal child adoption. There is an argument during a bowling event in which René Svend is killed. Mørck finds out that Svend has an alibi and was not present at the hospital at the time of the crime. During the personal check of the bowling player René Henriksen, they find out that his personal number is incorrect. In his gym bag they find receipts from Danske Bank , made out to a certain Claus Larsen in Roskilde. Mia Larsen, who is still trapped in the storage room, tries to light the moving boxes with a lighter and put an end to her life. At the last moment she is rescued by detectives. New evidence suggests that kidnappers and children are on the Vibehof near Jægerspris. Carl and Assad manage to free the children, but are then knocked down by Larsen with a mallet. The police officers are on the ground and can no longer defend themselves. At the crucial moment, the kidnapped boy kills his tormentor with a hammer.
Eva Larsen and her husband Willy decide to adopt their nephew Benjamin. Mia Larsen appears and brings her son back to her.
characters
- Carl Mørck: Deputy Detective Inspector, main character
- Hafez el-Assad: Mørck's assistant
- Rose Knudsen: Mørck's assistant
- Yrsa Knudsen: Rose's twin sister
- Marcus Jacobsen: Mørck's superior
- Lars Bjørn: Jacobsen's deputy
- Gilliam Douglas: Police technician from Edinburgh
- David Bell: Police sergeant
- Miranda McCulloch: IT expert
- Claus Larsen (alias "Chaplin"): the man without a name, perpetrator, alias "Mikkel Laust", alias "Lars Sørensen", alias "Mads Christian Fog" (farmer who is murdered by Larsen and whose identity he takes on)
- Mia Larsen: Claus's wife
- Benjamin Larsen: son of Claus and Mia
- Jens "Joshua" Krogh: entrepreneur in an agricultural machinery rental company
- Lisa "Rachel" Krogh: Jen's wife
- Josef, Samuel, Miriam, Magdalena and Sarah Krogh: their children
- Isabel Jønsson: widow and IT officer at the city of Viborg
- Lars Brande, René Henriksen and René Svend: bowlers
Character analysis
Character of the protagonist
In the third volume, too, the characters from Special Department Q play the central leading role.
“Carl Mørck and Assad have finally become the successful crime-fighting Pat and Patachon of their generation. Jussi Adler-Olsen continues to develop the story of his protagonists without appearing artificial; he builds in secrets, quirks and neuroses, allows himself the luxury of not dissolving some things and keeps on sticking to the ground with short, sarcastic jokes. At the same time, with the strange couple Rose / Yrsa, he brings an almost surrealistic trait into play, surrounded by a touch of everyday madness; also remains smug in the vague, in that - quite Scandinavian - his characters do not address certain topics. "
Figure of the antagonist
The focus is on the figure of the kidnapper, a certain Claus Larsen, who knows how to invade ever new petty-bourgeois relationships by changing his complex identities in order to arouse the trust he needs to carry out his criminal plans by manipulating and disguising his personality. So he cleverly uses his appearance and his cosmopolitan manner to make women dependent on himself, for whom he is looking for a very specific pattern. The facade is a prerequisite for approaching strictly religious families whose children he kidnaps.
“Jussi Adler-Olsen gives the man without a name who calls himself“ Chaplin ”a lot of space. He tells a family story in which an abused victim slowly mutates into a perpetrator. As is so often the case, the boundaries are fluid and the development that Chaplin takes is by no means inevitable. He is a clever man who was taught how closed, religiously oriented communities function from an early age. As an adult, he makes use of this knowledge in the most perfidious way. His system of blackmail and murder works because the respective members of the communities that Chaplin infiltrates precisely respond to these external stimuli. You are not used to anything else. [...] Fanaticism, oppression and a lack of communication skills make it possible for people like Chaplin to live out their mixture of obsession and calculation. Chaplin is not an outstanding genius of evil, but just a control freak who has learned his lessons. Who grew up in a world of suffering and brings precisely this suffering back into the world. Who doesn’t worry about pity, love and pain, but only looks at his environment from one point of view: how do I get the greatest possible individual benefit from it? "
Quote
“The following night, he made sure that his hostess and temporary lover always stayed close to orgasm. Exactly in the seconds before she finally put her head back and breathed deep into her diaphragm, he drew his fingers deftly from her lap and simply left them lying there in this crackling high tension. He got up quickly, leaving Isabel Jønsson alone to decide how best to discharge the tension. She was confused but that was the point. Over and over again, dark clouds pushed in front of the bright moon above their small terraced house. He stood naked on the terrace, smoking and watching the spectacle in the sky. The following hours would follow the pattern he was familiar with. First the argument. Then the beloved would demand an explanation why it was over and why now. She would plead and rant and plead again and he would answer, and then she would tell him to pack his things. And then he would have disappeared from her life. "
Reviews
The reviews of “Redemption” are no longer as unanimously positive as they were for the first case of “Mercy”. Certain patterns of action, such as the showdown between the perpetrator, Mørck and Assad in the final chapter, are already familiar from the first two volumes. The number of storylines that are not always conducive to the story is often criticized. Almost all reviews have in common that the figure of the antagonist is portrayed in a fascinating way.
“In Jussi Adler-Olsen's detective novel 'Redemption', the third 'case for Carl Mørck, Sonderdezernat Q', the focus is not on the investigator's work, but on the perpetrator's approach. Jussi Adler-Olsen only provides kitchen psychological clichés to motivate him. In doing so, the author gets lost in numerous subplots, some of which are only touched upon, are linked to events in the previous volumes 'Mercy' and 'Desecration' and have no meaning for the actual story. Still, 'Redemption' is an exciting thriller. "
“Jussi Adler-Olsen is not a particularly filigree author, but a very powerful one. Redemption makes no secret of the fact that in repressive structures shaped by fatalistic beliefs, precisely this redemption will never occur. Again, Adler Olsen is smart enough not to offer simple recipes such as revenge and satisfaction as a solution. When the novel staggers towards its end, there will be almost only losers. Only a gesture of reconciliation remains as a glimmer of hope. So much for the crime. Which the author locates in a web of oppression, fanaticism and ignorant world oblivion. Of course, Adler-Olsen does not hide the fact that there are reasons for all these behaviors and ways of thinking. The victims play into the hands of the perpetrator, allowing him to rule them and their lives, even long after the crime has been committed. But they never become the helpers of an overly audience-pleasing tension dramaturgy. They remain a credible product of their externally produced immaturity but born out of a longing for inner security. The disillusioning final act is inherently entirely credible, but in its developmental structure it is not far removed from mercy and desecration. So you can either enjoy the author's consistency or wish for a variant for the next book. "
"Jussi Adler-Olsen's trademarks are detailed descriptions of brutal crimes, precise character studies of his characters and a good dose of humor."
“What is“ Salvation ”about? A mass murderer. But Satan is breaking into this world. This is how he comes in. It has many names and none of them are real. He has many faces and none is his. But he has a mission, who himself fell victim to one. His father was a pastor, and one of the kind who beat the fear of God and the right life into women and children. Laughing was forbidden, Chaplin a figure of hatred. When the father found comics, the situation turned. For these humiliations he is now taking revenge on members of the sect, of which there is a rich selection in Denmark in Adler-Olsen. He operates under the guise of a bourgeois existence. His wife has been telling herself for a long time that he has secret service duties when he leaves to go about his kidnapping business. His approach is always the same: First he scouts an area, then he sneaks the trust of a single, middle-aged woman in need of love in order to have a shelter. Then it infiltrates like a chameleon into a sect, preferably one of the Jehovah's Witnesses . He always abducts two children from a wealthy extended family, collects ransom, kills one of the two children and sends the survivor home with the threat that he could strike again at any time. It has been going on for fifteen years, but it went unnoticed because none of the families ever contacted the police. The disappearance of the child was covered up, justification: Violation from the religious community. Sixty -year-old Jussi Adler-Olsen has a weakness for Bible quotes and strong women. This time it is fifty-two -year-old Isabel who succumbs to the murderer, but then becomes suspicious and starts the hunt. "
particularities
DTV-Verlag offers on the website dtv.de/ar/erloesung under the heading “Augmented Reality” an interactive map of the locations of “Redemption”, background information and a video interview with Jussi Adler-Olsen.
Economic success
With the novel “Redemption”, Jussi Adler-Olsen immediately made it to number 4 on the Spiegel bestseller list. There he was in first place for 7 weeks from July 4, 2011 . In Germany, the Danish author had sold 1.6 million copies within a short period of time.
expenditure
- Redemption , original edition published in 2009 under the title Flaskepost fra P, German edition for the first time in 2011 by dtv., Part 3 of the Carl-Mørck-Dezernat-Q series, paperback: 592 pages, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (July 1, 2011), ISBN 978 -3-423-24852-5 .
- Redemption , audio book, audio CD, Der Audio Verlag, Dav (July 22, 2011), audio book, read by Wolfram Koch (arrangement: Annika Golsong, directed by Hannes Hametner, Berlin 2011), ISBN 978-3-86231-062-3 .
- Redemption , Kindle Edition, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (July 1, 2011), ISBN 3-423-24852-1 .
Sequels
The novel Redemption is the third volume in the Carl Mørck Dezernat Q series and follows the second book Desecration. It is followed by contempt, expectation, and promise.
Web links
- Homepage of Jussi Adler-Olsen (German)
- Homepage of Jussi Adler-Olsen (English, Danish)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Krimi-Couch Redemption by Jussi Adler-Olsen
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Dieter Wunderlich: Jussi Adler-Olsen: Redemption (novel)
- ^ Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia INPFL
- ^ Place in Frederikssund Commune
- ↑ near Jægerspris , north of the city, there is also the nature reserve Jægerspris Nordskov, one of the most pristine forest areas in Denmark, with the English oak known as the congee, the oldest tree in the country and probably the oldest oak in Europe.
- ↑ from the narrative perspective 25 years ago
- ↑ Salvation . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-24852-5 , p. 159
- ↑ Jussi Adler-Olsen: Redemption - You should not rise above others, Satan has many names . In: FAZ , July 13, 2011, features section
- ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine, Feuilleton, Jussi Adler-Olsen: Redemption You shouldn't rise above others, And greetings from Job: The successful Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen rushes his special investigator Carl Mørck in “Redemption” through the parallel world of religious fanatics - on the Search for abducted children, July 13, 2011