Against all odds, Detective Carl Morck of the Copenhagen Police Department,
has made a success of Department Q. When he returned from sick leave a year
ago, the force wasn’t sure what to do with him. He was judged fit to return to
service but having your partner killed in front of you and your oldest friend
completely paralyzed didn’t leave the administration brimming with confidence
about Monck’s abilities to work. A brilliant bureaucratic idea created
Department Q for Morck. He was assigned to the basement, there to work on the
coldest of cold cases and leave the administration alone. Against all odds,
Morck and his Syrian assistant, a janitor named Hafez Assad, solved one of the
most mysterious cold cases in the department’s history. Now, Morck is
untouchable with all the public praise his work has garnered.
He is so successful that he returns from his summer vacation to find that
his basement empire has been enlarged with the addition of Rose Knudsen. Her
dream was to be a policewoman, but failing the driving test meant that couldn’t
happen. She has now been assigned to Morck to help him and he is dismayed by
the realization that just sitting and doing nothing is getting more problematic
as he gets more publicity and assistants. Against his inclination, he starts
another case.
The new case is a strange one. Two students, brother and sister, were
killed twenty years ago. The suspects were a group of boarding students from a
prestigious academy. There was no real evidence and the case was unsolved for
nine years. Suddenly, after almost a decade, one of the group had come in and
confessed and was currently serving time. The others in the group went their
separate ways, and used their wealth and influence to become leaders in Danish
businesses. Did the man in jail really commit the crime by himself as he
claimed or did the group buy him off? Who put the case on Carl’s desk and why
has it surfaced again after all these years? And where is the absent one,
Kimmie? Kimmie was the only female in the group but opposed to the success of
the men, has spent years living on the streets as a homeless vagrant. What drove
Kimmie to the streets and where is she now? Was the student murder the group’s
only crime or just the tip of the iceberg?
Readers who enjoyed Adler-Olsen’s first book, The Keeper Of Lost
Causes, will be glad to visit again with Monck. Monck’s gritty
determination to follow through and his ability to solve cases almost against
his will are intriguing. The plot of the case is complicated and intricately
connected as Monck attempts to determine why such successful men fear no one but
the absent one. This book is recommended for mystery readers.
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