Department Q

by 5 books in this series
#1 - Mercy
#1 - Mercy
At first the prisoner scratches at the walls until her fingers bleed. But there is no escaping the room. With no way of measuring time, her days, weeks, months go unrecorded. She vows not to go mad. She will not give her captors the satisfaction. She will die first.

Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck has been taken off homicide to run a newly created department for unsolved crimes. His first case concerns Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years ago. Everyone says she's dead. Everyone says it's a waste of time. He thinks they're right.

The voice in the dark is distorted, harsh and without mercy. It says the prisoner's torture will only end when she answers one simple question. It is one she has asked herself a million times:

WHY is this happening?
#2 - Disgrace
#2 - Disgrace
Kimmie's home is on the streets of Copenhagen. To live, she must steal. She has learned to avoid the police and never to stay in one place for long. But now others are trying to find her. And they won't rest until she has stopped moving - for good.

Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q, the cold cases division, has received a file concerning the brutal murder of a brother and sister twenty years earlier. A group of boarding school students were the suspects at the time - until one of their number confessed and was convicted. So why is the file of a closed case on Carl's desk? Who put it there? Who believes the case is not solved?

Carl wants to talk to Kimmie, but someone else is also asking questions about her. They know she carries secrets certain powerful people want to stay buried deep. But Kimmie has one of her own. It's the biggest secret of them all.

And she can't wait to share it . . .
#3 - Redemption
#3 - Redemption
Two boys, brothers, wake tied and bound in a boathouse by the sea. Their kidnapper has gone, but soon he will return. Their bonds are inescapable. But there is a bottle and tar to seal it. Paper and a splinter for writing; blood for ink. A message begging for help.

In Copenhagen's cold cases division Carl Mørck has received a bottle. It holds an old and decayed message, written in blood. It is a cry for help from two boys. Is it real? Who are they and why weren't they reported missing? Can they possibly still be alive?
#4 - Guilt
#4 - Guilt
1987: Nete Hermansen, a young woman brutally assaulted in her youth, sterilised without her consent by a fanatical surgeon, and banished to Sprogo, the island for outcast women is planning her escape and her vengeance. And soon people begin to go missing and no one - certainly not the police - knows why, nor that individual cases are connected.

Today:Carl Mørck and his assistants Assad and Rose in Department Q are examining old missing persons cases and spot a disturbing pattern from 1987 . . .
#5 - Buried
#5 - Buried
Over three years ago, a civil servant vanished after returning from a work trip to Africa. Missing, presumed dead, the man's family still want answers.

It is one of the many unsolved crimes left for Department Q, Denmark's cold case unit headed up by Detective Carl Morck.

But what Carl doesn't know is that the key to the investigation is in Copenhagen. Fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson is tough, smart and suspicious of police. Sleeping rough and hiding in the shadows is his way of life. But what is he running from - and what does he know worth killing him for?

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