Jussi Adler-Olsen

In the middle of a 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 at first, but then he receives some shocking news. Carl then has no choice but to lead Department Q into the tragic cold case of a vivacious seventeen-year-old girl who vanished from school, only to be found dead hanging high up in a tree.

The investigation will take them from the remote island of Bornholm to a hidden cult, where Carl and his assistants must stop a string of new murders by a skilled manipulator who refuses to let anything - or anyone - get in the way.

Book 6 in the Department Q series.

On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q Detective Carl Mørck finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen's Vestre prison. After 15 years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career.

But he is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn't talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison's incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is, why?

Carl's colleagues at the Copenhagen Police Department instantly turn their backs on him, leaving the ever-loyal Department Q team as his only hope. In search of answers, Rose, Assad, and Gordon must disobey direct orders from way up the chain to try to unravel the case.

Book 10 in the Department Q series.

In a Copenhagen park the body of an elderly woman is discovered. Though the case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide from over a decade ago, the police cannot find any connection between the two victims.

Across town a group of young women are being hunted down. The attacks seem random, but could these brutal acts of violence be related? Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q is charged with solving the mystery.

Back at headquarters, Carl and his team are under pressure to deliver results: failure to meet his superiors' expectations will mean the end of Department Q. Solving the case, however, is not their only concern. After a breakdown, their colleague Rose is struggling to deal with the ghosts of her past - a past seemingly connected to one of the division's most sinister case-files.

Book 7 in the Department Q series.

On her 60th birthday, a woman takes her own life. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck's desk, he can't imagine what this has to do with Department Q. But his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is not in fact a suicide, but a murder related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.

At Marcus' behest, Carl and the Department Q gang reluctantly begin to investigate. However, they quickly discover that Marcus is on to something: Every two years for the past three decades, there have been unusual, impeccably timed deaths with connections between them that cannot be ignored. As they dig deeper, it transpires that these "accidents" are in fact murders by a very cunning and violent criminal.

Book 9 in the Department Q series.

The newspaper refers to the dead body only as Victim 2117 - the two thousand, one hundred and seventeenth refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea.

But to three people, the 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.

For a troubled Danish teen, the death of Victim 2117 becomes a symbol of everything he resents and is the perfect excuse to unleash his murderous impulses. For Ghallib, a brutal tormentor from the notorious prison Abu Ghraib, the death of Victim 2117 was the first step in a terrorist plot, years in the making. And for Department Q's Assad, Victim 2117 is a link to his buried past and to the family he assumed was long dead.

Book 8 in the Department Q series.