This third selection in the Department Q series starts out rather slow. Two brothers are have been kidnapped and are being held in a remote boathouse. One of them manages to write a message in blood, seal it in a bottle, and drop in into the water. After 13 years and a trip from Scotland, said bottle and note lands on Detective Carl Mørck's desk. Large portions of the note had disappeared and it seemed almost impossible for Carl, Assad, and Rose to be able to solve this puzzle, let alone the crime. But solve it they did, and with such a compelling story that it was nearly impossible to put down. There is a passage in this story wherein a young mother is trapped under a pile of moving crates; it was so well written, so graphic that the reader him/herself feels trapped. So far, this has been the best in the Department Q series! A kidnapper who focuses on large families in closed religious communities; he kidnaps two of the children, demands a huge ransom, then kills one of the children and returns the other, telling the family that he is watching them. He will kill them all if reported to the police, which he knows they will be too afraid to do, and this is how the creep makes his living. He moves from town to town changing his appearance and identity with chameleon-like ease. It is chilling and seems nearly impossible for Department Q to resolve.528 pages, translated from Danish
The second Department Q novel finds Detective Carl Mørck working at solving a two-decade old brutal murder of a young brother and sister. His investigation brings him into contact with a wily homeless woman and some of the most powerful captains of industry in Denmark. How will he and his unlikely team, Assad and Rose, are pulled into an intricate puzzle of a mystery that makes the book very hard to put down.