Receiving a sealed bottle with a years-old plea for help by two young victims imprisoned in a boathouse by the sea, Detective Carl Morck follows leads to a desperate woman trapped in a brutal marriage to a man who keeps her in isolation and hides deadly secrets.

"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...

International superstar Jussi Adler-Olsen, with more than fourteen million copies of his books sold worldwide, delivers his latest in the bestselling Department Q series, a perplexing cold case with sinister modern-day consequences. 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 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...