"Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division, meets his toughest challenge yet when the dark, troubled past of one of his own team members collides with a sinister unsolved murder. In a Copenhagen park the body of an elderly woman is discovered. The case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide investigation from over a decade ago, but the connection between the two victims confounds the police. Across...

"The newspaper refers to her only as Victim 2117-the two thousand one hundred and seventeenth refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea. But to three people, the unnamed victim is so much more, and the death sets off a chain of events that throws Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division led by Detective Carl Mørck, into a deeply dangerous-and deeply personal-case. A case that not only reveals dark secrets about the past, but has deadly implications...

In 1987, Nete Hermansen plans revenge on those who abused her in her youth, including Curt Wad, a charismatic surgeon who was part of a movement to sterilize wayward girls in 1950s Denmark. More than twenty years later, Detective Carl Morck is presented with the case of a brothel owner, a woman named Rita, who went missing in the eighties. But when Carl's assistants learn that numerous other people disappeared around the same weekend as Rita, Carl...

Carl Morck used to be one of Copenhagen's best homicide detectives. Then a bullet almost took his life. Two of his colleagues weren't so lucky, and Carl, who didn't draw his weapon, blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing Carl expects. Carl's been selected to run Department Q, with a stack of cold cases to keep him company.

Morck is satisfied with the notion of picking up long-cold leads. So he's naturally intrigued when a closed case lands on his desk. A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects, part of a group of privileged boarding-school students, confessed and was convicted.