Detective Carl Morck already has plenty on his mind when he is presented with the case of a brothel owner, and a woman named Rita, who went missing in the eighties. New evidence has emerged in the case that destroyed the lives of his two partners, the case that sent Carl to Department Q. But when Carl's assistants, Assad and Rose, learn that numerous other people disappeared around the same weekend as Rita, Carl takes notice.

"New York Times and internationally bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen returns with the sixth book in his exhilarating Department Q series, featuring Detective Carl Mørck and his enigmatic assistants, Assad and Rose. In the middle of his usual hard-won morning nap in the basement of police headquarters, Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, receives a call from a colleague working on the Danish island of Bornholm. Carl is dismissive when he realizes...

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...